Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 after a 12-year absence from the company he had founded. Apple was close to bankruptcy at the time. Over the next decade Jobs not only revitalized the company, but turned it into one of the most important brands of our time. In those first months when the media was writing off the company as irrelevant and Apple employees/investors were not sure of the future, Jobs held an informal staff meeting. What he told his employees at the time rings as true today as it did then:
"Marketing is about values. This is a very complicated world. It's a very noisy world. We' re not going to get a chance for people to remember a lot about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear about what they want them to know about us. Our customers want to know what we stand for. What we're about is not making boxes for people to get their jobs done. Although we do that very well. Apple is about more than that. We believe that people with passion can change the world for the better. That's what we believe."
Apple, Think Different (1997)
