For legendary brand strategist Peter Economides, the ancient teachings of Aristotle don’t just belong in philosophy text books, but in modern-day brand and marketing ones as well – and his time working with Steve Jobs at Apple, proves it.
Speaking on the latest episode of the Ouzo Talk Podcast, Economides recalled working with Jobs on the now legendary ‘Think Different’ campaign – a campaign which set the then-failing Apple on the path towards being the world’s most valuable corporation.
Speaking to the Ouzo Talk Podcast, the Sydney businessman and TV host says that Greece’s islands are all within reach, even on a modest budget thanks to the country’s maritime infrastructure which includes regular ferries.
“We had developed the campaign, (and) were about to launch it globally and I made a trip around the world just to make sure that there were no cultural issues with Think Different and what the commercial was saying in different parts of the world,” Economides told Ouzo Talk.
“The British said to me; ‘It’s grammatically incorrect’. It’s true – It should be ‘think differently’. They said to me; ‘over our dead bodies will we run that in the UK’. I said okay, and I made a note of that.
“I then went to Japan and they said ‘it’ll never work here’. I said ‘why not?’ ‘Because we all want to be the same’.
“So I said to Steve Jobs ‘we have a problem with the Brits and the Japanese’. You know what he says to me? ‘Screw the Brits, screw the Japs. That’s the way we speak in California’.
“Brand is true to itself."
“The more and more I work on branding in today's modern world, the more I understand that Aristotle said it all when he spoke about rhetoric: ‘logos’, ‘ethos’, ‘pathos’ – it’s what branding is all about today.
“Brand is a reflection of who you are. it’s what Aristotle called ‘ethos’. it’s your character. It's who you are.
“To me a great brand connects with the roots of what it is. It digs deep into the past in order to dig out the roots, but then it moves way into the future. It creates a continuous line. It creates a bridge if you like between where you come from, and where you're going, and it describes that path before you take up the journey.
“Think Different did exactly that for Apple.”
Economides – now the head of his own Athens-based agency (Felix BNI), is famed for having worked on brands including; Audi, Campari, Coca-Cola, Citibank, Gillette, Heineken, Levi’s, Nestlé and Unilever among many others, while is 2011 presentation, Rebranding Greece, was a pivotal moment in the Greek economic crisis, providing a vision for how the country could find a path out of the doldrums.
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