Allison Johnson, former head of marketing at Apple, reveals her most memorable moments working with Steve Jobs in a video interview with Behance's Scott Belsky.
Johnson oversaw the launch of the company's hallmark products like the iPhone and its famous campaigns like "Mac vs. PC" and "There's an app for that." She's now the founder of West, a new kind of strategy and creative accelerator based in San Francisco focused on introducing new companies, products and ideas to the world.
Here is Johnson's response when asked about her most memorable moments at Apple.
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Question:
What was your single greatest moment working for Apple that sort of left an impression on you like none other.
Answer:
Three quick stories. One was, you know Steve - typically we would have town halls before a product was put into the world and the iPhone was one of those products that were really really deeply important to him personally. The amount of time and the level of stress that the whole company felt but certainly my team felt in putting that into the world was awesome and stressful. He had never ever really acknowledged my team in the process of building a product. He would praise the engineering, the software development teams, and the manufacturing teams but for the iPhone he recognized us in particular. That was the first time, that was the only time, so a moment of pride.
The other moments - I remember when we were doing the Beatles campaign, and that was another deeply important milestone. I really think that Steve set these milestones as important markers for him because they would drive him to make it to the next one. This particular one was super important. The team went to the U.K. to pick up literally a thousand photographs, maybe more than that, of the Beatles that had never been seen before. They were spread out all over the table, the boardroom table, thousands of them. He just walked around in tears, just you know, tears. It was a really special moment.
And the third one was another moment of tears when he was so sad and so angry about the Antennagate issue and how that was getting portrayed. His core leadership team, product and marketing leadership team were sitting around the table and he was pounding the table saying, "This is not the company I want to be. This is not what we are building. We don't want to be that company. We don't want people to think about us this way."
Beatles was tears, this was sobbing. Did he deeply care about that company and was it one and the same as him, without question.
---
Take a look at the full interview below. The stories begin at the 20 minute mark.
[via Jamie]
Johnson oversaw the launch of the company's hallmark products like the iPhone and its famous campaigns like "Mac vs. PC" and "There's an app for that." She's now the founder of West, a new kind of strategy and creative accelerator based in San Francisco focused on introducing new companies, products and ideas to the world.
Here is Johnson's response when asked about her most memorable moments at Apple.
---
Question:
What was your single greatest moment working for Apple that sort of left an impression on you like none other.
Answer:
Three quick stories. One was, you know Steve - typically we would have town halls before a product was put into the world and the iPhone was one of those products that were really really deeply important to him personally. The amount of time and the level of stress that the whole company felt but certainly my team felt in putting that into the world was awesome and stressful. He had never ever really acknowledged my team in the process of building a product. He would praise the engineering, the software development teams, and the manufacturing teams but for the iPhone he recognized us in particular. That was the first time, that was the only time, so a moment of pride.
The other moments - I remember when we were doing the Beatles campaign, and that was another deeply important milestone. I really think that Steve set these milestones as important markers for him because they would drive him to make it to the next one. This particular one was super important. The team went to the U.K. to pick up literally a thousand photographs, maybe more than that, of the Beatles that had never been seen before. They were spread out all over the table, the boardroom table, thousands of them. He just walked around in tears, just you know, tears. It was a really special moment.
And the third one was another moment of tears when he was so sad and so angry about the Antennagate issue and how that was getting portrayed. His core leadership team, product and marketing leadership team were sitting around the table and he was pounding the table saying, "This is not the company I want to be. This is not what we are building. We don't want to be that company. We don't want people to think about us this way."
Beatles was tears, this was sobbing. Did he deeply care about that company and was it one and the same as him, without question.
---
Take a look at the full interview below. The stories begin at the 20 minute mark.
[via Jamie]