In 1997 Steve Jobs was unhappy about how much Apple was spending on marketing and about the message the company was communicating. He realised that in an increasingly noisy world the chances for any company to be remembered were diminishing and that Apple needed to get really clear about what it was they wanted people to remember.

So he asked himself these three questions.

Who is Apple?
What do we stand for?
Where do we fit in this world?

And came up with this elegant answer.

“What we’re about isn’t making boxes for people to get their jobs done, although we do that well. Apple’s about something more than that. Apple’s core value is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.”
—Steve Jobs

From this starting point Apple’s ‘Think Different’ advertising campaign was born and it’s said that this also marked the company’s re-emergence.

When you’re building your business. When you’re busy being good enough from day to day, it’s easy to forget who you are. Sometimes what you stand for and where what you do fits into the world gets lost along the way.

That’s why it’s so important to understand and declare your values at the start. And why working out what you’re not is as good a place as any to begin.

Image by Dave MN.