Apple Branding
               One of the many benefits of being Apple, Inc. is that consumers everywhere recognize both their products and logo. Jenkins explains that "corporations seek to develop consumers with ''brand loyalty'' devoted to their commodities and beholden to their brand image" and he claims that "Apple has certainly succeeded" (Jenkins, 467). Their apple logo is one of the most recognizable branding logos, and Apple's reputation is attached directly to it. It provides a symbol that creates a stable framework for their products to be built off (West, 35). Apple's advertising is by no doubt creative, and advertising in its creative state is often more favored by viewers and give the brand more worth (West, 35). A high value is associated with Apple's brand, and many people spend a large amount of money to simply be a part of the world that Apple advertises. Many people are willing to pay more for a product with that Apple on it than for a product that may be just as good or better, and "large numbers of Apple owners display a powerful identification with Apple, the brand and its products" (Mackay, 2). This Apple logo appeals to users and non-users alike. Within these advertisements, they have created a world that is recognizable to the majority of television watchers. "The commercial has helped to create brand names for products and services, and groom generations of product loyalists", and these commercials have done just that (Elin and Lapides, 3). The ads help the world maintain its personal look that distinguishes itself from all of the other advertisements that are less simplistic. It maintains this look while appealing to each individual viewer by presenting each product's many capabilities. Their ability to appear attractive to many individuals, even if for that short moment, is a powerful ability. Mackay states:

               "Apple may have been successful because - despite not meeting the ideals that have been claimed - at given points in time, its products were functionally superior to the products of its competitors. The disparity between the rhetoric and the reality, the myth and the machine, however, alerts us to the significance of the discourse and to the fluid and emergent nature of the technology. It directs our attention away from the 'noble genius' and the technical, and towards the cultural meanings that surround and have been embodied in the technology (Mackay, 5)."

               It is clear that these cultural meanings that are associated by the technology itself are reified by the television advertisements that we have looked at. Levy claims that, "Jobs builds his brand the way Michelangelo painted chapels" (Levy, 81). They have created a brand that has power, a claim, a truth, and a recognizable world. They created a brand that is wanted. Do you want it? It lies within your hands.

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