What would you consult apple on?

As apple seems to be everyone's favourite case study to prove pretty much any argument going in the branding and communications worlds, it is difficult to think what you would go and talk to them about if they held their hands up and said, ‘we don’t know what to do next, can anyone help?’ In actual fact their approach to advertising and media is pretty straight forward. Its  conventional compared to what I would talk to most of my clients about. An advertising idea thats basically a piece of visual design work that never changes, with a TV + big posters media strategy. In fact most of the things that we use in case studies really happens from the inside out. Having said this I had a little think about what I might pitch to them given the chance.  To me it would seem to be pretty difficult to talk about doing much differently in the way their brand delivers on and enhances the experience of their products. In fact its pretty impossible to separate out where the product stops and the brand begins. I would leave them to it on this front.  But then if they are suffering anywhere then it is something like the same problem that McDonalds has had since their runaway success.  The problem of seeming almost like a corporate religion but one that leaves us with the distinct impression that it might not necessarily have our best interests at heart. I would talk to them about their place in the world. And lets face it they pretty much seem to succeed in most things that they do i.e. who would have thought they could have revolutionized the mobile business in just a couple of short years. I would put the design teams and technology experts to work on something bigger that looks at the broader social issues about the way we live.  If you applied the simplicity, innovation, inclusiveness and aesthetics that they bring to their products to other issues or problems that affect society such as education in third world countries or community organisation at home, I expect they would come up with something marketable.