Remember the old Apple campaign, “Think Different?”
It was all about people in the world whose “different” thinking had an enormous impact on our lives. Not simply headline-making-fifteen-minutes-of-fame impact or fifteen MBs of uploaded video, but real transformation. Impacting the world and leaving it a different place — most importantly a place that others could build on.
Mahatma Gandhi. Pablo Picasso. Alfred Hitchcock. Martha Graham. John Lennon. Amelia Earhart. Richard Branson. Frank Lloyd Wright. Martin Luther King, Jr. You get the picture.
Steve Jobs set a goal for himself… “I want to put a ding in the universe.” And ding he certainly did, raising the bar for all things digital with his extraordinary vision of how lives could and would be changed. By envisioning a simplicity that digital needed to be all about.
So I have to wonder and worry about his legacy when I think about what the iphone5C — designed with the intent of initially marketing in China (where the sales in luxury items outpace the West) — could have been and could have done, instead of what it seems to be.
I write this, having just returned from our annual WPP Strategy Conference, which was held in Beijing this year and where, among the many inspirational speakers, was Mr. Lei Jun., Chairman of the Xiaomi Corporation. Xiaomi introduced the Mi phone in China, and Lei Jun has interestingly and unfairly been called an Apple copycat, when to me it feels more like he’s channeling the real Steve Jobs.
Imagine if Apple had done the same and reinvented the phone for the rest of China or other parts of the developing world?
The truth is that mobile phones play a singularly important role in developing markets, particularly because most don’t have good landline infrastructure anyway and broadband is too far in the future.
What’s more, the developing world has an even greater interest in mobile innovation because their visionaries are thinking about how mobile can give people access to books they otherwise couldn’t afford. How mobile can help farmers prepare for changes in weather and market conditions. How it can give a nation a way to register homeless children, so they benefit from being part of the social system. Or how a phone can help an AIDS patient remember when to take their medicine.
Talk of the power of technology to transform. But then again, remember Steve Jobs said he wanted to “reinvent the phone.”
So, while Apple is pushing out optimistic releases about sales in China while the media says its reception has been underwhelming, I wonder if Apple has missed the real opportunity — to create a phone that could ding the universe.
Think of the possibilities: Quick-charging, long-lasting solar batteries. Emergency signals to NGOs. Voter registration and ballots. Building communities of farmers across vast geographic divides. Delivering lesson materials to support teachers in small, isolated schools. Buying supplies through SMS. Getting people paid in ways that keep the poor from being ripped off.
Bottom line, there are people all around the world, hoping to leave it a little better, who are tackling these issues.
So, I am hopeful and confident that Apple or anyone inspired by the legacy of Steve Jobs will reinvent the phone in a way that has a real human purpose in places that truly need attention. And I guarantee you that invention will not only be a philanthropic triumph, it will go down as a really smart business decision.
Jump on it. What are you waiting for?
- David Sable | CEO at Y&R Advertising
Remember the old Apple campaign, “Think Different?”
