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Apple looking to double employee head count for in-house advertising/marketing team

Apple-designed-in-california-print-ad

Apple is looking to double the amount of personnel on its in-house marketing and advertising team, according to a report from AdAge. Currently, according to the report, the team includes 300 employees, but Apple is said to be looking to increase that number to between 500 and 600 people.

Apple, in recent years, has reportedly been resilient to growing the team because of a philosophy created by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs:

Ramping up capabilities represents a necessary shift in direction for Apple, which under the late Steve Jobs “was fairly strict about the headcount in that group,” said the executive, who asked not to be named. “The group didn’t grow proportionally to the company as it went through astronomical growth, and that was partly because Steve wanted Apple to be seen as a products company, not a marketing company.”

Jobs did not want Apple to have a large internal marketing team, because he wanted the company to feel more product-based, not marketing-centric.

Apple has reportedly been moving to poach new people for this group and has been increasingly moving to reduce its reliance on current ad partner Media Arts Lab. However, the report says Apple won’t be breaking its exclusive ties with the firm.

Apple works with a few outside agencies, including TBWA/Media Arts LabMono in Minneapolis and San Francisco’s Eleven. That’s not expected to change. But the in-house group has been tackling more projects, doing everything from site design to tutorial videos for Apple products to maintaining a large internal commercial-production facility.

Last month, we noted that Apple has poached Pete Distad, a former Hulu Senior Vice President, to become a Marketing Vice President. Perhaps the hiring of Distad is a move in line with Apple’s marketing expansion strategy.

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Comments

  1. Tom Varela - 11 years ago

    “Resilient?” Are you channeling Norm Crosby?

  2. degraevesofie - 11 years ago

    Apple, in recent years, has reportedly been resilient to growing the team […]

    s/resilient/reticent/?

  3. rettun1 - 11 years ago

    Marketing and advertising does indeed have a huge impact. Heck, just look how many phones Samsung was able to sell by making fun of Apple customers. Now that philosophy has trickled down to their users, so there is a lot of hate flying around. And in all honesty I think the hate mostly comes from the android community. Though Apple users had their fair share of gloating from 2007-2011

  4. Pablo Rosero - 11 years ago

    The main problem is that Samsung is EVERYWHERE here in Ecuador (Latin America). Apple needs to step up with more advertising!

  5. Luke Davis - 11 years ago

    Where is the Apple logo on this advert? The most powerful brand in the world and you don’t use the logo.

  6. Julien Sulzer (@LeSulz) - 11 years ago

    I’ll apply!