Linked List: July 18, 2019

Thursday, 18 July 2019

An Oral History of David Cone’s Perfect Game, 20 Years Ago Today ★: One of the greatest days in baseball history. What are the odds that this could happen on a day when Don Larsen threw the ceremonial first pitch to Yogi Berra? One of the things I always loved about David Cone is that he didn’t have the best stuff — he pitched with his mind as much as he did his arm.
Mark Ritson on Apple’s Long-Term Brand Positioning ★: I enjoyed this quite a bit, but the big thing Ritson misses is that the fundamental reason why Apple’s brand is differentiated from its competitors isn’t about its advertising — it’s about the products themselves. The products themselves are differentiated — only iPhones run iOS, only Macs run MacOS. That’s where it starts, and the advertising only serves to point out how the products are different and why they’re better. The “Think Different” campaign was an exception, but that’s because at the time, Apple’s fundamental problem was that its products were not differentiated enough. That’s the thing many people misunderstand about Apple’s “product marketing” team. They don’t come in at the end and figure out how to advertise finished products; they’re right there at the beginning, helping define what the products actually are.