Apple has had longstanding recognition as a very successfully-marketed company and product line. A 2010 Pew Research Center study found that Apple was the top-reported tech company, with 15.1% of all technology-related articles published by mainstream sources focused on the company.

But very little of the talk comes from the company itself; Apple is notoriously secretive, with big releases of new products and information coming during company-sponsored MacWorld Expos, led primarily by the enigmatic CEO Steve Jobs.

 

What the advertisements sell
From the first advertisements of the Macintosh in 1984, Apple has used the ideas of individuality and uniqueness to market their products.
Steven Johnson (1997) describes the lifestyle branding of the Mac:
The first interface wars were basically cultural in nature, more about "lifestyle choices" than anything else. PCs, with their arcane codes and hideous green-on-black monitors, belonged to the suits, to Organization Man. The Mac's playful interface spoke to a different demographic: jazzier, creative types, new thinkers and iconoclasts. Buying a Mac was an expression of individual identity, like Steve Jobs wearing t-shirts to board meetings. (p. 51)

Naomi Klein (Jhally, & Alper, 2003) describes one of Apple's marketing strategies:
Apple has used revolutionary icons like Martin Luther King and Gandhi after their deaths, long after their deaths, as pitchmen for Apple. Because allegedly the Apple brand stands for doing things differently and these men did things differently.
" Because it is the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do." (8:45-9:14)

The Get a Mac ad campaign uses the idea of lifestyle branding as well as the parity strategy. The Mac is seen as young and stylish compared to the older, uncool PC, thus implying that a Mac is a stylish, slightly aloof computer for stylish, slightly aloof users. Additionally, the supposed downfalls of Apple's primary competition, the PC (and Microsoft), are highlighted, reducing product parity and encouraging users to purchase the claimed higher-quality Mac systems.

Earlier Mac ads use emotional branding of ideas—the idea that a person will be perceived as more creative and unique if he uses an Apple product. These ideas have created and perpetuated the idea of a supposed Mac lifestyle.