Apple and Think Different: selling identity, not products
People don't camp out overnight for a computer. They camp out for what they think that computer says about them. That's the whole play.
Some people tattoo a logo on their body. Not their family crest or their soccer team, but the mark of a company that sells them phones. Put that way it sounds absurd, but it happens. And before you write it off as a handful of die-hard fans, consider this: every time someone lines up at dawn for a gadget that will be sitting on shelves with no line the following week, they're doing the same thing as the person with the tattoo, just more quietly. They're not buying a thing. They're buying the feeling of being a certain kind of person.
The ad that never showed the product
In 1997 Apple was close to bankruptcy. Steve Jobs had just returned, and the first thing he did wasn't to launch a product. It was to launch an idea. The campaign was called "Think Different," and it had something very strange for a tech ad. It didn't show computers. It didn't mention megabytes, prices, or speed.
Instead it showed black-and-white photos of people like Einstein, Gandhi, Picasso, Martin Luther King. And a voice spoke about "the crazy ones, the rebels, the ones who see things differently." Apple wasn't telling you what its product did. It was telling you who you'd be if you bought it. The underlying message was simple: brilliant, nonconformist people use this. Are you one of them?
The people crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
Why selling belonging works
We're pack animals. For most of human history, being cast out of the group was a death sentence: alone you couldn't hunt, defend yourself, or survive. That need to belong is still wired into us, even if today it shows up as buying a brand instead of joining a tribe.
A strong brand gives people three things a product alone never can:
- An identity: "I'm the kind of person who uses this," a label they wear with pride.
- A group: others who use the same thing and share a way of seeing the world.
- A story: a narrative they feel part of, not just a customer who paid.
Once you pull that off, price stops being the conversation. Nobody argues about the cost of belonging to something they love. That's why people pay more for the "right" brand and defend that choice with reasons they don't fully believe themselves.
The brand as a common enemy
There's a detail almost no one notices about "Think Different": it works because it defines an "us" against a "them." The crazy ones, the rebels, the creatives versus the gray, the conformists, the ones who just follow instructions. That tension is what turns a customer into a follower.
The strongest tribe-brands always have an enemy, even a gentle one. A motorcycle that roars against the boring car. A young soda against the old one. It's not about hating anyone; it's about giving your people the sense that being on your side means something. When there's an "us," loyalty turns emotional, and emotion is far harder to copy than a product.
What to take from all this
You don't need to be Apple or spend millions on a campaign. The lesson works just as well for a barbershop, a clinic, or a taco stand: people don't just buy what you sell, they buy what choosing you means. Ask yourself what kind of person your customer feels like when they buy from you, and reinforce that in every detail, from how you greet them to how your space looks.
A product gets compared on price. An identity gets defended. In the end, the business that understands the second one is the one that earns its people's time and attention by treating them as part of something, not as one more ticket.