TED
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 11 months, 2011–2022
18:35 · 23M views · May 4, 2010
Simon Sinek's TED talk presents the 'golden circle' model: great leaders and companies inspire action by starting with why they do something, before how or what. He illustrates it with Apple, Martin Luther King, the Wright brothers and, as a counterexample, TiVo.
HN commenters cite it to explain why customers buy into a company's beliefs rather than its specs, especially in threads about Apple, marketing and product messaging.
11 comments from Hacker News
You can apply this idea to everything, though. "How is it the interest of Github stockholders to not censor certain projects when China starts DDoSing the whole site?" or even "How is it in the interest of Cloudflare to raise the prices for all of its customers, just to protect a site Russia doesn't like?" It can't all be about money. Companies that think only about money fail in the long term. If you don't believe that, then I urge you to watch this Simon Sinek video: this video
This is very relevant (How great leaders inspire action): this video Hint: It's all about the beliefs of a company and how consumers associate their beliefs with a company's beliefs. We know what Apple stands for (higher quality and more beautiful products). We know what Google stands for (more openess, more user freedom). What does Microsoft stand for? Can you answer it quickly? The only answer that comes fast enough is "money". I don't think Microsoft has an inbred culture inside the company for much else, at least not anymore. I also agree with the ending conclusion of the post, about Microsoft trying to cater to the "people in the middle", like not wanting to be close enough like Apple to deliver a great user experience, but not open enough like Android, too. In fact WP7 is even much stricter than desktop Windows. So they aren't addressing neither the Apple users, nor the Android users with this "mediocrity" strategy. Seth Godin likes to talk about how mediocrity is a bad place to be in, too: [LINK]
This essay is in radical need of a TL;DR. If something is this important, you owe it to the subject matter not to bury the lede under a mountain of history and flowery exposition. Ask yourself: who is this for? People who are not already deeply passionate will stop reading unless they are engaged in a minute of reading. Note that a minute is being extremely generous; on a commercial consumer site, it's apparently an average of 7 seconds before someone will click away. I recommend that you check out this video and reconsider how you might reframe your message as a call to action that speaks to a better future we can create together. this video I even jumped you to the good part.
I think this video by Simon Sinek explains very well why Apple is successful. It's the motivation behind doing the things they do that matters, not just what they make. This tends to attract a lot of customers to think the same way, and believe in Apple's goals and philosophy. this video
I find this a rather simple take on Apple marketing. Not saying it is wrong, but surely it can not apply to other products. I recommend watching this take instead. 10 years old, and still clicks: this video