Apple has won Advertising Age's first 'Marketer of the Decade' award, winning the award removes Apple from the annual 'Marketer of the Year' award nominations which the company had been awarded only once despite being "a contender almost every year".
In an article Ad Age writes that despite "expressed weariness" Apple stood out for several reasons:
the launch of both the iPad tablet and the iAd mobile ad platforms (and the industry impact both have had); the continued thriving sales and solid marketing behind Mac, iPhone and iPod; the successful retail-stores-as-marketing strategy; and the major crisis-management coup in skirting iPhone 4 "Antennagate."
Ad Age naturally points to key examples of instantly recognisable marketing produced by Apple from the "Switch" campaign all the way through to Apple's latest iPad adverts.
It seems fitting: Apple kicked off the aughts in 2001 with the iPod, an electronic device that went on to disrupt and forever change the music industry; then mid-decade it dropped the iPhone, a mobile device that changed the mobile-phone industry and added the word "apps" to the English vocabulary; and finally, in 2010 it debuted the iPad, a computing device with the potential to disrupt the media, publishing, entertainment and computing industries.
Yes, it has been a golden decade for Apple. And while one can certainly argue that its influence has been overstated -- it is No. 56 on the list of Fortune 500 by revenue -- Apple's influence on business models across industries from music and computing to entertainment and advertising, along with its impact on popular culture, media and, of course, marketing, has been indelible.