I always chuckle at the Apple haters who insist -- vociferously -- that Apple is a "marketing company" and that people buy Apple products because they are weak and are marketed to, nothing more.

This is not merely a lie. It is stupid.

And if you actually watch/view any Apple advertisement, the focus is on the product and its benefits -- to you.

On virtually any (open source!) (free!) Android product, by contrast, it's always focused on the 'coolness' and hipness and design and the fetishization of the device.

So much so that it's so patently obvious to all that only the Android fanboys with the most severe case of Apple Derangement Syndrome refuse to accept the truth.

Which is why I am not at all surprised that Samsung's head of marketing doesn't want us to think about Samsung products but instead, wants us to "feel" various, well, feelings about Samsung products.

This is not surprising. Samsung has attempted to wholesale copy Apple in device design, branding and distribution. They beliee, apparently, that there's a market for people that (secretly) want Apple but can't bring themselves to admit it.

And Samsung has been damn successful with this 'we are Apple but not really Apple' strategy, dominating the Android market.

Now, Samsung wants to copy what they *think* Apple's marketing strategy is: all about feelings...

As a user of Apple products, I can say my feelings toward my device are derived, first and foremost, by their clearly superior usability, build quality and functionality.

If Samsung wants repeat touchy-feely Android fanboy business, they better bring the quality as much as they bring the marketing.

From Samsung's head of marketing, whom, I confess I did not know this and am surprised to learn this, is a woman:

Samsung marketing executive Younghee Lee wants consumers to stop thinking about her company.

Instead, Lee wants consumers to start feeling something about Samsung and its products.

As head of marketing for the Korean electronics maker, Lee said she wants to figure out “how I can engage with consumers from the bottom of their heart, and not just be a big and functional and rational and reasonable brand.”

Lee, who worked for cosmetics brands L’Oreal and Lancome before joining Samsung four and a half years ago, said she wants consumers to love Samsung, to be obsessed with the company and its products.

Nowhere is that more clear than in the company’s current U.S. ad campaign, where the Korean company positions its products as the cooler alternative to the iPhone, despite the cultlike atmosphere that surrounds Apple.

Next time you hear a mindless Android fanboy/Apple hater talk about "marketing", just remind them that the biggest, baddest maker of ANdroid, is a copycat brand that relies heavily on marketing of the kind perfected by a make-up company.

Take a look at all these cool -- British! -- hipsters with their fondue and appies and DJ and skinny jeans, all waiting in line for the newest...Windows Phone.

If you think Apple is the biggest company in the world, the most profitable smartphone company in the world, the leading tablet maker in the world, the only  "PC" company that is growing -- because of marketing and desperate hipsters having to get the latest if not greatest Apple product because, you know, they're weak in spirit and were told to by Steve Jobs, even after his death -- than you, my friend...

...are stupid.

This classic from Bill Hicks is funny. 

Of course, he's dead. So joke's on him, I guess.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure these people hate you:

You can pack all kinds of marketing goodness into a smartphone app, but no app is worth the space unless consumers remember to actually, you know, open it. Trouble is, the likelihood that users will download your app and then promptly forget about it is all too high.

New York digital agency Densebrain hopes its new program, Sonic Notify, will remedy the problem. Using technology initially developed for an app that tracks buses, Sonic Notify uses bits of audio code to deliver messages, ads, and more to smartphones.

Jonathan Glanz, Densebrain's founder and technical director, says the idea surfaced unexpectedly during a meeting with Procter & Gamble this year.

"[They] wanted to know how to differentiate themselves in aisle," he says. "We said we wished we could just set people's phones off when they're standing in front of [a] product. And all of a sudden, we thought, 'We have something that can do that.'"

Repurposing the bus tracking technology, Densebrain devised small beacons--designed to be hidden from view--that can be attached to shelves, and which emit inaudible, high-frequency sounds that trigger smartphone messages. The audio code can also be overlaid onto an existing audio track. As long as consumers have downloaded an app integrated with the technology, the smartphone will respond to the sound without user activation.

In-store, the system could alert shoppers to special promos. At home, it could provide interactive content cued to TV shows. It could even have uses for live concerts and sports events.

Sensitive to notification fatigue, the software does allow people to opt out of messages.

According to these people, these are the 500 most valuable brands:

• Google
• Microsoft
• Walmart
• 497 others

and of these, 167 of the 500 companies are based in the US -- with a value of just over 40%.

The United States tops the list with 167 of the world’s leading brands and an estimated brand value of $1.3 trillion (40.6 percent of the global total). Only the European Union nations as a whole come close, with 30.2 percent of the leading 500 global brands, a value of $991 billion.

Japan ranks second, with a brand value of $324 billion, 10 percent of the world total. France is third with 39 brands valued at $243 billion, 7.4 percent of the world total. Germany is fourth, the U.K. is fifth and Switzerland is sixth. China comes in seventh with 18 brands and a total brand value of $99 billion, just 3 percent of the world total and less than a tenth of the US brand value. The BRICs - Brazil, Russian, India and China - have a total brand value of $275 billion, 8.4 percent of the world total, and roughly 20 percent of US brand value.

This 'slice of life' Windows Phone promotion is just the latest example of smartphone makers trying -- very hard -- to show you just how cool they are, and just how cool you will be if you use their device.

Shit, Mr Renaissance Man blur bassist Alex James has so much cool stuff going on in his life that he barely even uses his smartphone. Though when he does, it's a Windows Phone. Now with Bing!

That's all of it. Some guy I'm supposed to think is cool out doing all his cool master of the universe stuff. Did they even show the phone's screen?

It's similar with this series of Samsung ads. The 'masses' are the ones in line for the latest Apple product, no doubt. While the handful of cool people are the ones who have no time for that -- they're off leading their cool lives.

What are we to make of this? Is it merely chasing Apple? Is it being duped by the Apple haters into thinking that Apple is successful because of how they've marketed themselves? Rather than, you know, making superior products of superior quality?

I think that's only partly the case, in fact. I think Samsung and Microsoft (Windows Phone) have, for the moment, little response to the array of far cheaper, just as plentiful -- and just as functional -- lower-end Android devices. 

What differentiates a Samsung Android from a Motorola Android? Or HTC? Or any of the slew of Android devices on the market? 

Why buy a Windows Phone? What are the actual (real, not cool) tangible benefits in choosing Windows Phone over the Droid Bionic, say? Or iPhone?

I don't think either of these "cool" ads will work. And if they do, they won't work for long. Both Samsung and Microsoft will need to provide end users with something more than cool if they wish to make a sustained run in the smartphone business. With its alternative OS design, and now with a great Nokia device, Microsoft is pointed in the right direction.

Samsung, however, despite its current market dominance, needs to up its game. Copying Apple and promoting their coolness has its benefits, no doubt, but at the end of the day, it's the same Android OS with the same Android apps sold by the same carrier and likely with the same specs as every other no-name Android phone.

I've probably written at least 100 posts entitled "Apple is a Marketing Company." Hell, I even compiled dozens of posts on this topic and made them into a 99cent eBook -- available from Amazon!

The posts, as with the eBook, are, you know, ironic. Because *only* small-minded, reflexive, likely jealous Apple haters actually think Apple is a marketing company, or that the *hundreds of millions* of Apple customers around the world only pay for Apple products cause they are sheep, standing in a line, doing as they are told. 

As I have documented here repeatedly, as late as yesterday, watch an Apple commercial. Go on, I'll wait. The focus is on the product. Period. What it does, how it does it, and the direct benefits it offers its users.

Now watch nearly *any* Android ad, for example. As I just showed only yesterday, which was one of several dozen examples, the advertisement is almost entirely "marketing". The hipness, the coolness, the futuristic aspects, the hot babe that kicks ass, the Tom Cruise wannabe acting like he's (now) living in a Minority Report world.

Go on, watch them. I'll wait.

Which is what makes this Samsung ad so utterly sad. It was probably never true but if it was true, ever, it was true *years* ago. Back when Apple didn't rule the planet's personal computing market. Back when they had to do anything to get business. That is no longer the case. Just the reverse, in fact. That is why every Apple commercial you now see focuses on the product. Period. And every Android commercial you see, including this desperately seeking clever ad from Samsung, *deliberately* chooses *not* to focus on the product.

Cause product vs product, it can't compete. In the entirety of the ad below, how much time is spent on the actual Samsung product? It's "specs"? It's abilities, it's operating system -- it's direct benefit to the user?

5% maybe? There's a brief mention of 4G, though they don't dare say it's actually *easier* to access the mobile web. They do mention, quickly, the larger screen, though don't dare say the *picture quality* is actually better. Because they can't. 

Perhaps this ad could have worked 3 years ago. Which I think makes it the perfect metaphor for Android. 

{Bonus: Absolutely *every* consumer products company on the planet wishes they could have an actual line of customers waiting to purchase. Samsung included.}

Damn, Google does it is very best to completely copy the Apple-style in this Galaxy Nexus commercial.

It's all THINK DIFFERENT.

The narrator and the pacing are EXACTLY like in the iPad commercials. 

There's the shots of the MASTERS OF THEIR WORLD being all cool and mastery. The cut head shots (which is not the same as cutting to a head shot).

Does *anyone* at Google have actual self respect? All that brainpower and they fucking copy Apple at every turn. Life is too short, people.  I mean, damn. I could see if you were a little company, desperate for revenues. 

Time for Larry Page and Google to pull up their big boy pants and forge a new path and new identity, outside of Apple's (considerably wide) shadow.

Pundits have recently clued into Apple's amazing supply chain capabilities and logistical optimization. This helps $AAPL, obviously, and, as Big Blog has finally realized, allows Apple to do clever things such as buy up 80% of some critical component for a year's supply of, say, flash drives.

I think they're missing a larger story. 

Apple may be a secretive company but they reveal more about themselves, honestly, in their commercials and (rare) public statements, than the totality of the blog entries, say, that Google posts where they talk about "open" and "choice" and "for the users", which I've long told you is just bullshit, straight up.

For the amazing power of the Apple supply chain, and the leverage it provides the company, pundits continue to view Apple Inc. as old Apple Corp. A company that will be marginalized, ultimately, to a small sliver of the (smartphone, laptop, tablet) market in large part because of Apple's "insistence" upon "control" and their "demand" for margins.

I think not. I watch Apple ads and Apple tells me something completely different. Apple wants to be everywhere. Like Coke. Of course, they will not sacrifice quality. They understand that to achieve their goals and continue -- as Apple -- they need to achieve a certain margin rate, and maintain the brand. And, yes, more integrated products across more product lines, soon even to include a television, means Apple can potentially make more money from fewer customers, provided those customers buy up all Apple products.

Still, watch the ads. Apple is telling us something. They are telling us that their great products work -- everywhere, for everyone. 

Folks at Apple are smart. They don't incorporate a message such as: everywhere, for everyone, unintentionally. Apple is committed to selling products. They are committed to scale. And, no doubt, they believe that over the long-term, quality wins out. Those premium Apple laptops, for example, no longer seem so expensive, do they? The price point stayed about the same but Apple made them better, every year, with every iteration. While maintaining super-tight controls over costs and keeping margins high -- ensuring you get the best. 

Others faltered. That's why a shitty Dell or Toshiba laptop, with Office and Windows, may now set you back about 2/3 the cost of a loaded MacBook Pro. Back in the day, it was 1/2, tops. 

Apple is committed to scale. Get that into your head. Only, they are committed to achieving scale over a longer period that most big companies plan for, or can even comprehend. 

This is why Apple ads are like Coke ads. It's (essentially) the same product around the world. Everyone loves it. It's affordable. And no one -- still -- is able to provide a *superior* alternative. 

Apple for Everyone.