Branding Strategies for Success (Collection)

1. Design Matters

Design is the "in" mantra—so what does this mean exactly, and why do you care?

In 1997, shortly after Steve Jobs returned to Apple, Dell's founder and chairman, Michael S. Dell, was asked at the Gartner Symposium and ITxpo97 how he would fix financially troubled Apple. "What would I do?" Dell said. "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."

He had no idea he'd be eating those words just ten years later when Apple's market capitalization surpassed not just Dell's $64 billion ($47 billion as we write this), but IBM's as well. In mid-2007, Apple was the most valuable computer maker in the world. Its market capitalization stood at nearly $162 billion, $6 billion more than that of industry heavyweight IBM. At ...