As to why the CEO’s presence might be most effective in limited doses: he has to balance where he spends his time. He extends a halo effect over the rest of the marketing, i.e., people who have seen the keynote associate an Apple billboard or commercial with their positive impression of the keynote. And not every medium conveys the same message when named individuals are featured due to other associations: for example, an Apple keynote speaker benefits from associations with state of the union speeches, commencement addresses, and so on, while the same figure in a print ad might be associated with a car lot owner in testing.
I don’t want to belabor this too much, but who says that the presenters at a product event have to reflect the corporate structure, that the presenters for the beginning, end, and transitions need to reflect the corporate organizational chart, and are required to be the people who fill those roles in the company? Why can only upper-level management do those jobs?
My point, which I know at least some others agree with, is that Tim Cook is not the best presenter in Apple (I would say he’s a negative), and I’m asking for some “thinking out of the box” about this instead of just assuming the status quo that was set by Steve Jobs.
Yup, let’s get a lead presenter who is somewhat brittle but with endearing qualities who can offer a little sly humor from time to time and not simply a full measure of earnest sincerity.
Generally speaking, you don’t put non-senior people on the stage to run major corporate events. Which is what these releases are.
I agree that Tim isn’t the best presenter.
If they wanted to get “out of the box”, I would suggest they ditch the entire event format, move to a more staggered release cycle, and let the individual divisions handle their own events. Let Craig & Jeff handle the Mac stuff, for example.
But at the moment, that’s not how Apple operates. They like having the “the entire company is on the same page, and here’s where we are” vibe.
For presenters, a third option I didn’t mention could potentially be Joz - he’s their head marketing guy. He would actually make sense, and I would think he’d be much less rigid than Tim.
Apple’s pre-recorded events have been excellent. Each one has been better than the last. The production values have been the best I’ve ever seen. And every single person is so on target it seems like they have all been the same person speaking through different bodies.
I prefer the new format but I wish they wouldn’t edit so tight. These are interesting people, let their personalities show though.
Or get more of them out on podcasts where their personalities can shine through a bit. I’ve really enjoyed the interviews with Apple employees on MPU and Upgrade.
I think Tim does fine. My opinion is that what he lacks in presentation skills are more than offset by having the CEO representing a united company.
I don’t think I’m saying this purely from keeping with the status quo; more than any company I can think of, Apple is a brand that integrates its parts together. If it split, or appeared to split, into separate entities then I think the idea that Apple products sit in an ecosystem, and they are all tightly integrated, could start to diminish.
In fact, this tight integration is only increasing in recent years. Having the same person open the keynotes for all product launches is a powerful message, I think.
And I am not even sure about him “lacking” in presentations. He is a phenomenal CEO that has not only continued Apple’s success of the Steve Jobs’ era, but he even has built up more momentum for further success. Have a look at the Mac: he was able to bring it back to its strengths after realizing that they were heading into a direction that was endangering the Mac’s existence. “He” was able to create a CPU that is being designed and owned by Apple and that is blowing the competition out of the water. There are a lot of experts that say that it is a pity that there are no Macs for Linux or Windows (Linus Torvalds and many more). Intel has sent signals that they hope to produce Apple silicon for Apple! Not Intel CPUs but Apple ones. Incredible.
What we “geeks” want for a Keynote is not what a good CEO necessarily is like. A good CEO is working behind the scenes. The show part in the keynotes is part of his job, but it is not the key part. Otherwise an actor might be the perfect CEO: good presenting skills, popular with whomever, but a disaster in his day job. Happens way more often than we think, doesn’t it?
Yes, he has to do his part in those keynotes. And I think he does them quite well. What he has accomplished is good for Apple’s future: those keynotes are no one-man-show any longer. It is not about two or three guys over and over again who basically present what others have accomplished. At least some of the presenters are the actual persons that are responsible for the things they are presenting (to some degree at least).
When Tim Cook eventually will step down, the next CEO will have a much easier job than he did when he took over from Steve Jobs: Tim Cook has set the stage years ago for other persons. He is not Apple. He is part of Apple. That is something I was not sure about him being able to do when he took over.
…while, if this forum is to be believed, presiding over a general decay of Apple Support and Apple Stores along with three model years of MacBooks that caused us to lose faith in that product. It makes his presentation style all the more annoying.
I don’t think that makes his presentation style any more annoying. He has his weaknesses as a presenter, but if one’s opinion of Apple is that they’re going downhill, that would affect the credibility of any presenter that didn’t get up there and outright address those things head-on. And nobody from Apple is going to do that.
Regarding Tim, I would suggest that he’s also presided over substantial growth of the company, which always causes other issues. It’s really, really hard for even good CEOs to grow a company.
And while Tim is ultimately on the hook for all problems, I think the keyboards can likely be laid mainly at the feet of Jony Ive. We don’t exactly know why Jony retired, but his retirement seemed to dovetail almost exactly with the keyboard fix - so it’s even possible that there was some internal agitation to encourage that issue.
Cook’s main issue - most likely - is that he’s a numbers guy, not a hands-on product guy. So he has to take the word of the people in his divisions about whether or not their stuff would work in the real world.
All that to say, with a company that’s such a “black box”, it’s hard to know exactly what Tim has has or hasn’t been doing behind the scenes to try and make things better. But he’s a mixed bag of strengths and weaknesses, just like about every other CEO out there. And a bunch of people on a forum noticing problems doesn’t seem to be stopping Apple from putting up hugely-impressive numbers quarter after quarter. Somebody must be liking what they’re doing.
Well, of course, we like (much of) what Apple is doing. They have an enviable and unequaled history of great products that we love to use. I admire Tim Cook for his operations and logistical prowess. But it is well known that people succeed at something in the corporate world and then rise above that to a new position where their success is not as stellar.
I read “The Peter Principle” many years ago. As I recall it said people in an organization will be promoted to their level of incompetence. But TC appears to have an excellent team, is delivering products that the public likes, and most importantly is making money for the shareholders.
Right now, as I see it, the only potential problem for Apple appears to be one of the things that has made them so successful, China. Between China’s energy crisis and their desire to annex Taiwan there may be some hurtles for Apple to negotiate in the near future.
