Steve Jobs (15 page)

in history and one in which we begin to see the hero-villain

scenario playing out in Jobs’s approach to messaging. The tele-

vision ad, 1984, introduced Macintosh to the world. It ran only

once, during the January 22 Super Bowl that same year. The

Los Angeles Raiders were crushing the Washington Redskins,

but more people remember the spot than the score.

Ridley Scott, of
Alien
fame, directed the Apple ad, which

begins with shaven-headed drones listening to their leader (Big

Brother) on a giant screen. An athletic blonde, dressed in skimpy

eighties-style workout clothes, is running with a sledgehammer.

Chased by helmeted storm troopers, the girl throws the ham-

mer into the screen, which explodes in a blinding light as the

drones sit with their mouths wide open. The spot ends with

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CREATE THE STORY

a somber announcer saying, “On January 24, Apple Computer

will introduce Macintosh and you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like

1984
.”1

Apple’s board members had unanimously disliked the com-

mercial and were reluctant to run it. Jobs, of course, supported

it, because he understood the emotional power behind the clas-

sic story structure of the hero and villain. He realized every

protagonist needs an enemy. In the case of the historic 1984

television ad, IBM represented the villain. IBM, a mainframe

computer maker at the time, had made the decision to build a

competitor to the world’s first mass-market home computer, the

Apple II. Jobs explained the ad in a 1983 keynote presentation

to a select group of Apple salespeople who previewed the sixty-

second television spot.

“It is now 1984,” said Jobs. “It appears IBM wants it all. Apple

is perceived to be the only hope to offer IBM a run for its money

. . . IBM wants it all and is aiming its guns on its last obstacle to

industry control: Apple. Will Big Blue dominate the entire com-

puter industry? The entire information age? Was George Orwell

right?
”2

With that introduction, Jobs stepped aside as the assembled

salespeople became the first public audience to see the commer-

cial. The audience erupted into a thunderous cheer. For another

sixty seconds, Steve remained onstage basking in the adulation,

his smile a mile wide. His posture, body language, and facial

expression said it all—
I nailed it!

Problem + Solution = Classic Jobs

Introducing the antagonist (the problem) rallies the audience

around the hero (the solution). Jobs structures his most exciting presentations around this classic storytelling device. For

example, thirty minutes into one of his most triumphant pre-

sentations, the launch of the iPhone at Macworld 2007, he spent

three minutes explaining why the iPhone is a product whose

time has come. The villains in this case included all the current

INTRODUCE THE ANTAGONIST
65

smartphones on the market, which, Jobs would argue, weren’t

very smart. Listed in the left column of Table 6.1 are excerpts

from the actual presentation; the right column shows the words

or describes the images on the accompanying slides.
3
Pay attention to how the slides act as a complement to the speaker.

TABLE 6.1
JOBS’S iPHONE KEYNOTE PRESENTATION

STEVE’S WORDS

STEVE’S SLIDES

”The most advanced phones are called

Smartphone

‘smartphones,’ so they say.”

“They typically combine a phone plus

Smartphone

e-mail plus a baby Internet.”

Phone + Email + Internet

“The problem is they are not so smart and

Smartphone

they are not so easy to use. They’re really

Not so smart. Not so easy

complicated. What we want to do is make a

to use.

leapfrog product that is way smarter than

any mobile device has ever been.”

“So, we’re going to reinvent the phone.

Revolutionary UI

We’re going to start with a revolutionary

user interface.”

“It is the result of years of research and

Revolutionary UI

development.”

Years of research &

development

“Why do we need a revolutionary user

Image of four existing

interface? Here are four smartphones: the

smartphones: Motorola Q,

Motorola Q, BlackBerry, Palm Treo, Nokia

BlackBerry, Palm Treo, and

E62—the usual suspects.”

Nokia E62

“What’s wrong with their user interface? The

The top half of each image

problem with them is in the bottom forty.

fades away, leaving just

It’s this stuff right there [points to keyboards

the bottom half—

on the phones]. They all have these

the keyboard

keyboards that are there whether you need

them or not. And they all have these control

continued

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TABLE 6.1
JOBS’S iPHONE KEYNOTE PRESENTATION (continued)

STEVE’S WORDS

STEVE’S SLIDES

buttons that are fixed in plastic and are

the same for every application. Well, every

application wants a slightly different user

interface, a slightly optimized set of buttons

just for it. And what happens if you think of

a great idea six months from now? You can’t

add a button to these things. They’re already

shipped. So, what do you do?”

“What we’re going to do is get rid of

Image of iPhone

all these buttons and just make a giant

screen.”

“How are we going to communicate with

Image of iPhone on its side;

this? We don’t want to carry around a

a stylus fades in

mouse. So, what are we going to do? A

stylus, right? We’re going to use a stylus.”

“No [laughs]. Who wants a stylus? You have

Words appear next to

to get them out, put them away—you lose

image:

them. Yuck. Nobody wants a stylus.”

Who wants a stylus?

“So, let’s not use a stylus. We’re going to use

Stylus fades out of frame

the best pointing device in the world—a

as image of index finger

pointing device that we’re all born with.

appears next to iPhone

We’re born with ten of them. We’ll use our

fingers.”

“We have invented a new technology called

Finger fades out, and

‘multi-touch,’ which is phenomenal.”

words appear:

Multi-Touch

“It works like magic. You don’t need a

Words reveal upper right:

stylus. It’s far more accurate than any touch

Works like magic

display that’s ever been shipped. It ignores

No stylus

unintended touches. It’s supersmart. You

Far more accurate

can do multi-finger gestures on it, and boy

Ignores unintended

have we patented it!” [laughter]

touches

Multi-finger gestures

Patented

INTRODUCE THE ANTAGONIST
67

Make note of how Jobs asks rhetorical questions to advance

the story. “Why do we need a revolutionary user interface?”

he asked before introducing the problem. He even raises prob-

lems to his own solution. When he introduced the concept

of replacing the keyboard with a touch screen, he rhetorically

asked, “How are we going to communicate with this?” His ready

answer was, “We’re going to use the best pointing device in the

world . . . our fingers.”

Nobody really cares about your product or Apple’s products

or Microsoft’s or any other company’s, for that matter. What

people care about is solving problems and making their lives

a little better. As in the smartphone example in Table 6.1, Jobs

describes the pain they’re feeling, gives them a reason for their

pain (usually caused by competitors), and, as you will learn in

Scene 7, offers a cure.

Making His Case to CNBC

“Why in the world would Apple want to jump into the handset

market with so much competition and so many players?” asked

CNBC’s Jim Goldman in one of the few interviews Jobs granted

immediately after the iPhone announcement. Jobs answered the

question by posing a problem in need of a solution: “We used all

the handsets out there, and boy is it frustrating. It’s a category

that needs to be reinvented. Handsets need to be more power-

ful and much easier to use. We thought we could contribute

something. We don’t mind if there are other companies mak-

ing products. The fact is there were one billion handsets sold in

2006. If we just got 1 percent market share, that’s ten million

units. We’ve reinvented the phone and completely changed the

expectations for what you can carry in your pocket.”

“What message is this sending to your competitors?” asked

Goldman.

“We’re a product company. We love great products. In

order to explain what our product is, we have to contrast it to

what products are out there right now and what people use,”

said Jo
bs.4 T
his last sentence reveals Jobs’s approach to crafting
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CREATE THE STORY

a persuasive story. Explanations of new products or services

require context, a relevance to a problem in your customer’s life

that is causing that person “pain.” Once the pain is established,

your listener will be much more receptive to a product or service

that will alleviate that pain.

The Apple Religion

In his book
Buyology
, marketing guru Martin Lindstrom equates

Apple’s message with the same powerful ideas that propel wide-

spread religions. Both appeal to a common vision and a specific

enemy.

“Most religions have a clear vision,” writes Lindstrom. “By

that I mean they are unambiguous in their missions, whether

it’s to achieve a certain state of grace or achieve a spiritual goal.

And, of course, most companies have unambiguous missions as

well. Steve Jobs’s vision dates back to the mid-1980s when he

said, ‘Man is the creator of change in this world. As such he should be above systems and structures, and not subordinate to

them.’ Twenty years and a few million iPods later, the company

still pursues this vision.
”5

According to Lindstrom, who spent years studying the

common traits of lasting brands, religions and brands such as

Apple have another quality in common: the idea of conquer-

ing a shared enemy. “Having an identifiable enemy gives us the

chance not only to articulate and showcase our faith, but also

to unite ourselves with our fellow believers . . . this us-versus-

them strategy attracts fans, incites controversy, creates loyalty,

and gets us thinking—and arguing—and, of course, buying.
”6

Will It Eat Me?

Establishing the antagonist early is critical to persuasion, because

our brains needs a bucket—a category—in which to place a new

idea. Think about it this way: your brain craves meaning before

details. According to scientist John Medina, our brains were

formed to see the big picture. Medina says that when primitive

INTRODUCE THE ANTAGONIST
69

man saw a saber-toothed tiger, he asked himself, “Will it eat

me?” and not “How many teeth does it have?”

The antagonist gives your audience the big picture. “Don’t

start with the details. Start with the key ideas and, in a hier-

archical fashion, form the details around these larger notions,”

writes Medina in his book
Brain Rules
.7
In presentations, start with the big picture—the problem—before filling in the details

(your solution).

Apple unveiled the Safari Web browser during Macworld

2003, designating it the fastest browser on the Mac. Safari

would join several other browsers vying for attention in the face

of Microsoft’s juggernaut—Internet Explorer. At his persuasive

best, Jobs set up the problem—introducing the antagonist—

simply by asking a rhetorical question: “Why do we need our

own browser?
”8 Be
fore demonstrating the new features—filling in the details—he needed to establish a reason for the product’s

existence.

Jobs told the audience that there were two areas in which

competitors such as Internet Explorer, Netscape, and others fell

short: speed and innovation. In terms of speed, Jobs said Safari

would load pages three times faster than Internet Explorer on

the Mac. In the area of innovation, Jobs discussed the limita-

tions of current browsers, including the fact that Google search

was not provided in the main toolbar and that organizing book-

marks left a lot to be desired. “What we found in our research is

that people don’t use bookmarks. They don’t use favorites very

much because this stuff is complicated and nobody has figured

out how to use it,” Jobs said. Safari would fix the problems by

incorporating Google search into the main toolbar and adding

features that would allow users to more easily navigate back to

previous sites or favorite Web pages.

One simple sentence is all you need to introduce the antago-

nist: “Why do you need this?” This one question allows Jobs to