Apple was founded April 1, 1976. The founders were Steve Jobs, and Steve Wozniak. They had a strong desire to make computers that were very user friendly. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were working out of a garage, and they found great success with Apple after the company went public making millions of dollars. Within five years they had netted 100 million dollars. Beginning in 1981 IBM released their own personal computers. This made it difficult for Apple to penetrate the market. In 1985 Steve Jobs left Apple to begin neXT, his own software company, and Steve Wozniak left to become a teacher. Then in 1996 Apple purchased neXT software which was Steve Jobs company, and he was asked to be the interim CEO in order to revitalize the company. The first iMac was introduced in 1998, in 2001 Apple introduced iTunes and the iPod. Then in 2007 the first iPhone was introduced. As stated by Steven Levy from Britanica “Propelled by the popularity of the iPhone, in 2018 Apple became the first company to reach a value of one trillion dollars.”
In 2015 Apple first released their Shot on iPhone campaign to help promote the iPhone 6s camera. This campaign was mainly advertised through social media such as Twitter and Instagram, and then also transitioned onto billboards world wide. The campaign on social media and on the billboards included photos that were taken by actual iPhone 6s users. This campaign has also been repeated in 2019, 2020 and 2021 as well. The campaign in 2019 focused on the iPhoneX models and the campaign in 2020 focused on the night mode of all the iPhone 11 models and the 2021 campaign focused on the iPhone 12.
The content of this campaign was created almost completely through user generated content through a photo contest. Apple encouraged iPhone users to take a photo with their phone camera, and then submit those photos to Instagram or Twitter through the hashtag ShotOniPhone, they were also able to submit through email. When users were submitting their photos they needed to to indicate what model of iPhone they took the photo on, and they also had to follow @Apple on either Instagram or Twitter depending on which platform they used to submit the photo. Apple also incentivised iPhone users to enter the contest with the promise of a prize. After the contest ended the submitted photos were judged by a panel of judges. The ten winners had the opportunity to have their photos featured on billboards, in Apple stores as well as online like on Apple’s Instagram. The prize was non transferable with no cash redemptions or substitutions, but the winners did receive a licensing fee for their photos to be used on billboards and Apple marketing channels.
https://youtu.be/bAR_iaQtABc
Yes. Shot on iPhone was very successful on social media. Currently on Instagram the hashtag has 19.3 million posts. There are also many tweets to the hashtag on Twitter, but I was not able to find the exact number. In 2019 and the beginning of 2020 shot on iphone also gathered a huge amount of attention on TikTok. There was a large trend that included short funny videos immediately followed by the words shot on iPhone in the videos. The hashtag on tiktok actually has 722.4 million videos. This is a huge amount of unpaid advertisement for the brand,and it all seemed to be pretty positive. They definitely accomplished bringing attention to their iPhone cameras, and well surpassed their social media engagement objective.
No. The Shot on iPhone campaign seems to have increased sales for Apple in the first quarter 0f 2015, 2019 and 2020 (the campaigns took place in the first quarter of each year.), but it did not increase sales by 10% by the end of those years. In 2015 Apple actually sold around 231 million iPhones which was 62 million more than in 2014. This increase in sales can not be directly tied to the campaign, but it must have had an impact to bring awareness to the iPhone. In another study I found that the iPhone featured in the 2015 campaign was not the leading model but 2019 the iPhone XR was. I did not find data for the 2020 nor 2021 campaigns.
Yes. Apples Shot on iPhone Campaign was very successful. Their original 2015 campaign was so successful they have repeated it in 2019, 2020 and 2021 as well. This campaign was so simple yet so effective. It allowed for their product to be promoted through user generated content, which can be a risk, but it paid off for Apple. Because the content of the campaign was not sponsored or endorsed by Apple it gave the campaign a credible and transparent feel. The campaign also reached 25 different countries and 10,000 billboards as well as on T.V. commercials. Apple wanted to spread awareness and interest of the high quality of their iPhone cameras. With this campaign they were to have about 6.5 billion media impressions, and 95% of their online mentions were positive. This campaign was able to do more than just promote their product. Sabin Laskoski said in his article with Bloomsburg University's, The Voice “This campaign is every marketer’s dream – widespread effects with powerful, lasting impacts that create a worldwide community of amateur and professional photographers alike, all while boasting Apple’s powerful camera designs.” Shot on iPhone campaign also launched the iPhone camera to be used to film music videos like Selena Gomez, Loose You to Love Me, and Lady Gagas Stupid Love, and even some feature length films.
One stakeholder would be current iPhone users and potential new customers. Current users will be excited to upgrade to the newest model of iPhone. Many iPhone users also could not imagine not using an iPhone. The campaign will hopefully drive excitement and draw in new customers. The second stakeholder group would be employees, especially employees that work at the Apple Stores. They will be motivated to sell more Apple products, especially the newest models because they are consistently being upgraded. It makes the job more fun to sell products you are excited about. The third stakeholder would be shareholders. Positive Pr for Apple will hopefully increase iPhone sales, thus raising the stock price and giving shareholders a better return.
iPhone users are one target audience because they already purchase from Apple, so they know what the products are like. Shot on iPhone targeted existing customers in order to encourage and excite them to upgrade their current iPhone to the latest higher-tech models. The shot on iPhone campaign was also targeting potential customers. By having their campaign be user-generated it created an interest to use the new iPhone camera. It allowed potential customers to see that they would be able to take professional looking photos with the convenience of carrying it in their pocket. This would also interest photographers and filmmakers because cameras can be very heavy and expensive, so a small and more inexpensive way to shoot would be very intriguing. This would hopefully create more sales, and based on previous graphs it seemed to work.
