The Man Who Named iMac on Working With Steve Jobs and How Apple Is No Longer Thinking Different

Ken Segall is one of those rare individuals who find themselves in the intersection of technology, creativity, and advertising. A copywriter by trade, he was responsible for some of Apple's most clutter-breaking advertising most notably, the 'Think Different' campaign. He's most famous - or perhaps infamous - for coming up with the iMac name for Apple's desktop computers. Later, the 'i' extended itself to a host of products including the more famous iPhone and iPad.

At the Nasscom India Leadership Forum 2015 in Mumbai, we spoke to Segall on his time at Apple and how advertising and technology have changed over the years.

The iMac and its many skeptics

History tells us that Steve Jobs wanted to name the iMac as "MacMan" but eventually went with Segall's suggestion. Needless to say at first Jobs was the biggest skeptic of the idea, Segall tells us.

"He did not like the 'i' when he first saw it," says Segall. "Steve had an instinct of reaction. His management style is to always push.I find these emails which I saved from my communications with Steve. I was going through them once and so many of them said 'you can do better, try again' and I'm thinking 'I remember being a lot more successful than these emails would indicate!'"

Seagall presented two sets of names for Apple's desktops, and both times included iMac. Jobs was not pleased. Nonetheless, he warmed up to it on seeing responses from his peers.

"He had to put it on a computer model and showed it around to his inner circle. It started getting good reactions and that was enough to put him over the edge. But in two meetings, we did not succeed [in convincing him]," Segall says.

No one, not even Jobs, realised the prescience of the name till much later, what with it featuring heavily in Apple's product line.

"We didn't know, Steve didn't know...it was just computers then. We didn't have any handheld devices, so you could really appreciate what the iThing could do. Although part of our presentation was that it was a foundation and that you could have other iThings but the mind didn't really go there," Segall confesses.

"We had iMovie come out and iPhoto and it was like 'hey we can use the i!' Then lo and behold it became something that was far bigger than any of us ever dreamed," he says.

Return on investment versus building a brand

In an age where marketing and advertising in tech has become extremely result oriented, Segall says he was fortunate to work with Jobs, whose approach to marketing favoured creativity over meticulous research.

"I was very lucky to work with Steve Jobs because he had his own set of rules. He didn't necessarily believe in the standard ways," Segall reveals. "When I worked with Dell for example, every project we started had to have the spreadsheet that proved return on investment and [that] everything was going to be worth it," he says.

For Segall and many others, Jobs was a visionary.

"He made investments in areas like marketing," says Segall. "It's something most leaders would shy away from when their company is on the verge of bankruptcy and focus on cutting costs across the board."

"Steve being a passionate marketer said 'we're going to invest money, serious money to make a statement that we're back and that we're innovative', he invested the money that did not have a visible return. It was all on faith that it was the right thing to do," Segall believes. "He kind of went on his gut like that. I think a lot of companies don't anything unless there's concrete evidence that it will pay."

This is further contrasted to the other companies Segall has worked with, which is a veritable who's who of tech.

"Different companies I worked with like Intel and Dell are very data driven. The creative ideas were put in front of research and all around the world and you'd get reports and have to respond to the research," Segall claims. "It got really crazy where again, I'm probably spoiled because I spent all those years with Steve Jobs. He didn't believe in asking other people's opinions for things that were beyond their level of understanding."

"If you're a creative person you say 'thank you, finally someone who has sense!' but most companies don't work that way. Most of them are formalised and everyone's got their department and if you're the head of marketing you've got to show all the proof before you'll get a budget to do something."

Apple now

In the post Steve Jobs-era, Segall believes, Apple seems to have lost its edge and become like any other company.

"I'm not a fan of the current stuff and I think the simple answer is that Steve isn't there anymore," he says. "He [Jobs] had a level of taste that was very, very high. At certain times he would have a goofy sense of humour and that can be seen in some of the stuff that was seen in the past as well. But generally very sophisticated, classy sense of style and taste. It feels to me now that Apple in marketing is behaving more like a big company and the people who are now responsible for advertising seem to have a checklist and its mainstream."

To Segall, Apple in its current avatar should be pushing the envelope in advertising and marketing. Instead, it's playing it with extreme caution.

"To me if you own the world as Apple does, you can afford to take more chances but it seems like they're being more safe. So you get commercials which are like 'everyone around the world is using an iPad, look what they're doing!' and it's not very special," Segall says.

"People around the world are using Android as well and they're doing hundreds of thousands of things on Android," he adds. "I personally prefer those edgy ads and the great example is the Mac vs PC. everyone seems to love that and that gave a personality. Mac had advantages but it also suddenly had this personality and they were fun to watch and people would talk about them. I'm not suggesting they do the same thing for iPad and iPhone but it seems like they just don't have that kind of edge that they used to. I miss that."

Today, Segall says that Google is doing really eye-catching work, but feels that the company is getting too diversified, and losing its message.

"You look at the companies like Google and whatever and there's some really good things. They've done some really good ads for search. I want to like Google because they're so inventive and do so many things and maybe that's their downfall though, that they do too many things," he says.

On ad blockers and online advertising

We couldn't let Segall go without talking about ad blockers.

"You've actually touched a nerve with me because in one sense I'm an anti-advertising advertising person, I think every good thing gets spoiled by people who misuse it," he says. "We had rules when the Internet first started with advertising on the Internet. One of the rules was that you couldn't autoplay a video for example. You could have it run maybe, without sound and press a button to unmute it but it was a courtesy. You're a guest on some page and you don't want people bombarding you."

For Segall it was all about treating those logging on fairly, expressing disappointment in the current practises that the advertising fraternity indulges in.

"Like everything in life, people want to make more and more money and get in people's faces and now it really bugs me to the point where just one month ago I got AdBlock, never had it before," he divulges. "I think advertisers have a moral responsibility to not pollute the environment. Unfortunately, some people may respect that, others don't. The mainstream news does autoplay for videos now. No one cares about those original rules anymore so it's just for more clicks and eyeballs."