78 CREATE THE STORY
cents a song. We studied all these, and that’s where we want
to be [points to “hard drive” category on slide]. We are intro-
ducing a product today that takes us exactly there, and that
product is called iPod.With that, Jobs introduced the hero, the iPod. The iPod, he
said, is an MP3 music player that plays CD-quality music. “But
the biggest thing about iPod is that it holds a thousand songs.
This is a quantum leap because for most people, it’s their entire
music library. This is huge. How many times have you gone on
the road and realized you didn’t bring the CD you wanted to
listen to? But the coolest thing about iPod is your entire music
library fits in your pocket. This was never possible before.”^2 By
reinforcing the fact that one’s entire music library could fit in a
pocket, Jobs reinforces the hero’s (iPod) most innovative quality,
reminding the audience that this was never possible until Apple
appeared to save the day.
After the iPod’s introduction, Knight-Ridder columnist Mike
Langberg wrote an article in which he pointed out that Creative
(the maker of the original Nomad Jukebox) saw the opportu-
nity in portable music players before Apple and unveiled a 6 GB
hard-drive player in September 2000; Apple followed with its
first iPod a year later. “But,” he noted, “Creative lacks Apple’s
not-so-secret weapon: founder, chairman, and chief evangelist,
Steve Jobs.”^3”I’m a Mac.” “I’m a PC.”
The “Get a Mac” advertising campaign kicked off in 2006 and
quickly became one of the most celebrated and recognizable
television campaigns in recent corporate history. Comedian
John Hodgman plays “the PC,” while actor Justin Long plays the
“Mac guy.” Both are standing against a stark white background,
and the ads typically revolve around a story line in which the
PC character is stuffy, slow, and frustrated, whereas the Mac has
a friendly, easygoing personality. The ads play out the villain
(PC) and hero (Mac) plot in thirty-second vignettes.