FINAL ESSAY FINAL


In the initial Episode of a new BBC documentary entitled, ‘Secrets of the Superbrands,’ Alex Riley examines the similarity between Apple and religion. What defines a superbrand and to what extent could this claim be true?

A Superbrand is a term used to describe a brand that is not only incredibly successful but also has reached a very high level of recognition and prestige. What differentiates such Superbrands like Apple from smaller companies is that they evoke an almost cult status within their field. ' Superbrands should inspire passion, and everyone involved should be a guardian of the brand,' (Duffy, 1999). Apple is one such Superbrand that has enjoyed a huge amount of success, ‘for a time the computer world became an orchard: there was Apricot, Peachtree and whole rows of others. But they didn’t last. It was apple that had done it.’ (Olins, 2003)

In the BBC documentary, journalist Alex Riley begins to examine this relationship between Superbrands and cult followings. The aim of the documentary was to understand how certain brands have become such large parts of the lives of their buyers and to gain an insight into the devotion of some Apple followers.
Riley delves further into the inner workings of Apple and boldly suggests how their mass followers can be compared to religious followers. To what extent could Apple be an extension of religion and what is the company doing to evoke such passion from its consumers?

The Oxford English dictionary defines a brand as, ‘A type of product manufactured by a particular company under a particular name’ (accessed 2012). Olins explains how, many years ago brands were put in place simply to avoid us mixing the sugar from the salt and were rather dull and boring and stood for standard quality (Olins, 2003). Moving forward a few decades and you’ll find us in a rather different world. Ideologies of branding have changed and brands are now about involvement and association. Brands have enabled us to communicate who we are and where we are in society. They can also be altered to customize and enhance your own particular self-perception (Olins, 2003).

Today, brands are about creating a sense of belonging and there’s no denying that Apple customers thrive on this sense. Firstly with the attention surrounding the letter I for example the iPhone, iPad, iMac, iTunes with many more to come. The letter I alone has the strong power of membership and has become Apple’s key way of naming their products. When a consumer purchases an, I product, they instantly become a member within Apple’s club. However a decade before the invention of the Apple Mac computer, John Berger in his 1972 book entitled, ‘Ways of Seeing’, argues how companies similar to Apple, make us believe that if we buy the latest product on the market we will become a better version of our self and be successful and more desirable within society, however as Berger states, ‘we will be poorer by having spent our money.’ (Berger 1972).

One of the main arguments within the Alex Riley documentary for the BBC that connects Apple to a religion is the messiah characterization of founder, Steve Jobs. Type “Steve Jobs Messiah” into Google’s search engine and you are welcomed by 713,000 results in just 0.18 seconds. Talking about religion can often be a sensitive issue but if you break Apples history down, there are qausi religious and archetypal aspects to its story.

Riley explains how in 1985 Steve Jobs with the unofficial title of, ‘The Lord of silicone Valley’ was betrayed by Apple's then CEO, John Sculley and was forced out of his own company. Without him, Apple went from being envied by other companies in the industry to a farce. Apple came within weeks for filing for bankruptcy brought on by a succession of product failures and mismanagement. Jobs blamed the company’s downfall on a lack of innovation. In 1996 Steve Jobs returned to the company as their saviour with new software and brand new, innovative ideas, such as the iMac and iPod. It was these ideas that saved the company, not only financially but enabled them to become widely accepted within the technology sector and created the superbrand Apple we know today. Products such as the iMac and iPod propelled Apple back to the top and overtaking Microsoft in value in 2010 (Riley, 2011).

In February 2010 Steve Jobs graced the cover of, The Economist magazine (Fig1).
On the cover, Jobs is depicted as a prophet, shown holding the iPad as a religious tablet. The image presents a strong resemblance to Moses standing on top of mount Sinai surrounded by his Jewish followers awaiting the newly set commandments (Fig2). Jobs is shown wearing a religious gown and his head surrounded by a large golden halo and beams of holy light. This image also compares well to a stained glass window in a religious building showing Jesus being surrounded by holy light. (Fig3)

This religious scenario again, is very similar to Apple’s keynotes and announcements. People will gather in their thousands at Apple’s yearly keynotes (Fig 4) and eagerly anticipate the release of brand new products that will ‘change the way we communicate’ and will ‘shape our lives’ (Jobs, 2010), much like Moses’ commandment tablet. It’s no coincidence that before it’s official name, the iPad was often dubbed the ‘Jesus Tablet’ (The Economist 2011).

Throughout the years, Apple has imagined new innovative ways to sell their products, a key example being the Think Different campaign, date. Berger (1972) explains how in a consumer society, one method advertisers use as a marketing technique is to hire celebrities to endorse their products, exploiting our envy. Apple have approached this technique in a radically different way by using powerful and iconic figures. As part of the campaign, (Fig 5) Apple used a photograph of the 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso) to act as an endorser for their products.

By using the spiritual leader of Tibet, Apple is instantly placing themselves at a similar level of high recognition and prestige. They are confidently using their brandmark alongside an iconic figure to show that they have paralleled the Dali Lamai’s achievements and ethics. As Berger (1972) suggests, ‘If we buy what it is being offered our lives would be different than what it is.’ With the, Think Differently campaign, it just shows to what extreme levels Apple will go in promoting themselves not only as a highly desirable company but also using religious cult figures and thus supporting Alex Riley’s argument that there is a connection between the way Apple market themselves and religion. Klein (2002) is weary of this technique and describes how Apple are selling their ideas back to the consumer. Klein suggests how within today’s society we have a strong sense of community and democracy and Apple via figures such as The Dali Lamai and Ghandi relay these already inbuilt ethics back to us so the consumer connects with the brand.

The second argument within the Alex Riley documentary for the BBC that connects Apple to a religion is the discovery within the program that explains how images of Apple products activate the same parts of the brain of an Apple consumer that religious imagery does in followers of their religion, he states how Apple, ‘triggers a religious reaction,’ (Riley 2011). Earlier this year, an article written for CNN (Milian 2011) found that when neuroscientists ran an MRI scan it showed how an Apple consumer’s brain was stimulated by imagery of Apple products in the same way that religious imagery stimulates the brain activity of a religious follower.

The results from the MRI scan (Fig 6) show that when shown Apple products, Alex Brookes’ (the subject) brain produces more activity in the visual cortex and enhances the subjects’ visual attention. However Rose (2011) disputed the validity of this claim suggesting how the same connection could be made with any stimuli that an individual have associated feeling with for example, ‘Red Sox fans and Ducati collectors.’ Ollins (2003) suggests how our religious beliefs have been replaced by our connection to brands. He explains how ‘the key is emotion.’ Perhaps here Ollins is suggesting that we have poignant connection to brands and some consumers use the Superbrand as a religious replacement.

Kahneny (2010) states how, ‘If you're joining a church, you're joining a community. And when you buy an Apple product, you're joining the Apple community.’ Danziger (2006) also examines this parallel between Apple designing not only products that people can buy but engineering a whole subculture for their consumer. Danziger explains how, ‘It’s not just about selling the customer another computer, iPod, or other gadget; it is about building a lifelong relationship with the customer that transcends the time spent in the store making the purchase.’

Both Kahneny and Danziger agree that when you purchase an Apple product you buy into a community that suggests how Apple is committed not only to designing their products but to give their consumers a sense of belonging. However Don Slater (1997) argues that consumer culture has a, ‘potential for developing or thwarting the kind of life one might want to live.’ Therefore we may be falsely sold the ideology that investing in an inanimate object will give us status Apple use this consumer insecurity.

The third argument within the Alex Riley documentary for the BBC that connects Apple to a religion is the connection between an Apple store opening and the pilgrimage of religious followers (Fig 5). Alex riley states his observations. ‘The scenes I witnessed at the opening of the new Apple store in London’s Covent Garden were more like an evangelical prayer meeting than a chance to buy a phone or a laptop.’ People came from all over the world, some as far as Turkey, and camped overnight to be one of the first people to visit the store. ‘For some extremely zealous Apple fans, spending a night outside an Apple store waiting for the newest iPhone is as much a ritual as a pilgrimage might be for religious devotees.’ (Heussner, 2010)

During the documentary, whilst Riley was speaking to an employee at the new Apple store, the employee was abruptly ushered away by a colleague who feared that the employee could be relaying classified information about the store to Riley. In this clip it demonstrated how suspicious and secretive Apple’s store openings can be. Riley witnessed how before the new store opening there is a copious amount of clapping and cheering and Riley claims the staff of the shop have all been ‘whipped up into some sort of crazy evangelical frenzy’ (Riley 2011). Moments before the store opening, Riley explains how the customers ‘have all got glassy eyes like as if they've been whipped into a state of hysteria and they’re in a Prayer meeting where someone’s going to get healed.’ What Riley discovered was that Apple fans would go to extreme lengths to welcome in a new Apple store, even if it means interacting with products that are already available to them previously.

One ABC article suggests that, ‘next time one is in need of a spiritual pick-me-up, maybe they should forego the traditional houses of worship and seek out the technophile’s temple instead: The Apple store.’ (Heussner 2010). Heussner is not the first to spot this parallel, Riley is also curious as to why Apple stores look like churches and begins to lists the similarities with examples such as the store’s stone floor, arches and Apple products are mounted on pedestals like individual altars. (Fig 6) During the documentary, Riley interviews Bishop of Buckingham, who reinforced his claims. The bishop backs up the list and states that the stores are very temple like with the glass staircase, letting in different textures of light, much like a stain glassed window would in a church.

The documentary has raised some valid points, which have been reinforced, by not only other people’s findings but by science, (Fig 6). Apple are not the only ones to hit a cult following. After the release of the first Star Wars film, Audiences were inspired by the “Jedi lifestyle” and the idea of good and evil and in turn, developed theology based on the series. The religion named Jedi, believes that there is one all powerful force that binds all things in the universe together. Jedism is recognized by the UK census, it’s classed as a Non Religion but it’s a religion none the less and Jedi’s can be found all over the world from United Kingdom to the Czech Republic, with nearly 40,000 followers in England and Wales. By census measure, is the UK’s fourth most popular religion after Christian, Muslim, and Hindu (BBC 2003) The figures just show how strongly people take the ethics and moral code of a fictional film. If we apply the same idea to Apple, with it’s supposed moral code and ethics, would it be too extreme to suggest that apple could go to such extremities and begin to drift into a recognized religion?