A fortnight ago, Steve Jobs announced that he was resigning as Chief Executive Officer of US technology firm Apple Inc. with former Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook the taking over. From the difficult days of the late 1990s to today, Jobs has guided the company he founded in 1976 to become one of the most successful and biggest companies in the world. As the public face of Apple, he has become synonymous with new product launches, with items such as the iPod, iPad and iPhone reinventing the way the world interacted with technology.
Speculation has been rife since the announcement of Jobs’ departure surrounding how Apple would cope without Jobs at the helm. Much of course will depend on the way the company operates and how important one man is to its operation, but we can use YouGov’s BrandIndex data to measure the immediate impact on public perception.
BrandIndex Attention Score for Apple
As we would expect, the Attention score (the number of people hearing news about Apple, whether it be good or bad) rose immediately, both in the UK (from 38 on Aug 23rd to 47 yesterday) and in the US (from 46 to 54). The Index, an amalgamation of six key measures – Impression, Quality, Value, Reputation, Satisfaction and Recommendation – also rose slightly in both countries.
BrandIndex Index Score for Apple
Although those gains were not that large, and have, to some extent, fallen back in the last couple of days, the very positive news for Apple is that it has increased rather than decreased. These are, of course, early days, but Apple can certainly be buoyed by the fact that its already high scores (which are in the high +30s for Index in both countries) have not been harmed. It seems the British public does not feel any different about the Apple brand since the departure of Jobs.
