by Yu-kai Chou
So the multi-billion dollar question is: So, how did Apple do this?
Besides offering stellar products with elegant design and meticulous engineering, Apple has been one of the few electronics companies that actually try to sell a higher meaning.
Lets examine two of the most successful commercials in history - both from Apple.
The Crazy Ones in 1984
The first Apple commercial that reached massive fame and success, is the “1984” commercial, aired in 1984’s Super Bowl XVIII on CBS39.
This is a build-up of the popular novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” by George Orwell, published in 1948 about a futuristic dystopian world where a unified society is controlled and brainwashed by a centralized government40.
The ad presents a drab, depressive setting - representing a diabolical, yet orderly society; seemingly under the repressive control of a totalitarian influence. In a large room filled with gray, cheerless individuals dress in monotonous grey uniforms, an authoritative voice booms. The masses stare blankly at a huge screen displaying the colossal image of a “dictatorial figure”. “Big Brother” is addressing the minions, demanding their obedience, their loyalty, their minds.
Suddenly, a woman in full color runs in and throws a sledgehammer at the big screen, completely shattering it. Then, a deep male voice says, “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984.’”41
Through this commercial, Apple reassures viewers that the world wouldn’t be controlled by “Big Brother” - IBM, but would be liberated by Apple’s computers.
Though Apple’s Board did not really approve of this commercial and it was almost thrown into the garbage bin, when finally aired, it became one of the most successful commercials in history. In his book, Electric Dreams: Computers in American Culture, Ted Friedman discusses how powerful the commercial was:
Super Bowl viewers were overwhelmed by the startling ad. The ad garnered millions of dollars worth of free publicity, as news programs rebroadcast it that night. It was quickly hailed by many in the advertising industry as a masterwork. Advertising Age named it the 1980s Commercial of the Decade, and it continues to rank high on lists of the most influential commercials of all time. 42
Afterwards, Apple’s internal team calculated the amount of free airtime that the commercial garnered. They estimated that the total value was about $150 million worth of derived airtime. Within three months of the commercial’s appearance, Apple would sell $155 million worth of Macintoshes, establishing itself as the revolutionary computer company on the block.
The second extraordinarily successful Apple marketing campaign to resonate with people was the “Think Different” campaign. This commercial ran in 1998, not long after Apple’s Founder, Steve Jobs returned to the board at the end of 1996. 43
At the time, Apple was a struggling company, and a dying brand. Jobs not only trimmed Apple’s product line from over 350 items down to 10, he knew he had to reinvent the Apple brand.
While there are many shorter versions of the ad, the original full text runs:
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels? We make tools for these kinds of people.
While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.44
The series of commercials was a gigantic success. It won dozens of prestigious advertisement awards and made the Apple brand “cool” again. It tangibly spearheaded the transformation of Apple from a dying company into literally the most valuable company in the world within a decade.
Have you noticed something unique and interesting about these ads?
Neither of these campaigns actually talks about computers or electronics. They don’t talk about specs, RAM, color screens, or computers. You’re not even sure what they sell if you are unfamiliar with the company.
They sold a vision.
When people connect with a statement like, “Because of Apple Computers, 1984 will not be like Nineteen Eighty-Four,” many started to think, “Wow! That’s amazing! I don’t know what they do, but I want to be part of this!”
How do you “be part of it”? You buy the Macintosh computer.
Similarly, when people hear the deep wise voice concluding with, “Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do,” they become inspired and think, “Yes! I’ve always been hiding my true passions to conform with what people expected of me. I want to be one of the crazy ones that changes the world!” And of course, the way to think different and change the world is to buy an iPod and have a thousand songs in your pocket.
See the power of Epic Meaning & Calling? When every other company is selling how amazing their computers are, Apple sells a vision worth believing in. Interestingly, when Apple was developing the Think Different campaigns, the first rule was that there would be no products in the commercials. This is so counterintuitive, yet so Human-Focused.
As long as Apple can continue to make people think that it is a vision worth believing in, their customers will continue to be “Apple People” and buy Apple products. But if one day Apple does something stupid and breaks the trust of being a vision worth believing in, people will stop blindingly purchase their products and will begin to look at the specs again.
Mjolnir is Not Just a Tool
Some companies have approached me during my all-too-good-sounding soapbox, and asked me, “Yu-kai, this Epic Meaning & Calling thing is great and all, but our product is just a tool. It’s not meant to change the world and solve global warming. How can we add Epic Meaning & Calling to a simple tool?”
For this, one of my favorite examples is the mobile app Waze45. Waze is a GPS-based mobile navigation app that provides a wealth of user-generated information about travel conditions from the Waze community.
When you think of a GPS, it is purely functional as a tool. You turn left, turn right, and get to your destination - very functional as a tool, but not very epic. So how does an app like Waze create Epic & Meaning & Calling? And how do you instill that meaning without giving users long videos to watch or huge amounts of text to read?
What Waze did was brilliant. In the early days of Waze, when you first download the app, it would show you one image. On the left side of that image, there is a huge snake monster, consisting of a street with many cars stuck on it. This snake monster’s name was Traffic. On the right side of the image, there were cute little Waze knight characters with swords, shields, and armor, working together to fight this big snake monster.
So now, when you are driving with Waze, you are not just getting to your destination, you are helping a community of brave Wazers fight this Traffic monster! This resonates on a subconscious level because, deep in our hearts, everyone hates traffic with a passion.
Of course, the actual way to beat this Traffic monster is to drive with Waze on. Since Waze is a user-generated system, as you drive with the app on, it will start to gather valuable information about the road conditions that will help the overall driving experience of the community.
The powerful thing about Epic Meaning & Calling, is that it turns otherwise passive users into powerful evangelists of your mission. They are even highly forgiving of your flaws. Because Waze is user-generated, sometimes it is not as accurate. Consequently, in its early days, it took me to th
e wrong location about three times, and I became apologetically late for my meetings.
You would think that the only purpose of a GPS is to take you to the correct destination, and when it fails in that one purpose, most users would say, “This is a piece of crap. I’m going to delete it!” However, because of the Epic Meaning & Calling Waze has instilled in the hearts and minds of people, when it takes people to the wrong location: instead of deleting it in anger, many people start to panic. “Oh no! The map is broken! I need to go fix it!”
How powerful is that? When you fail in your core competency, instead of deleting the app in anger, users actually rush to solve the problem for you. Again, when it comes to Epic Meaning & Calling, what makes you happy is irrelevant. It’s about the bigger meaning and higher vision. And when you see a crack in that higher vision you believe in, you become fearful that others will see that crack and lose faith in the vision. As a result, you take it upon yourself to fix it.
This ties back to the core of Human-Focused Design. You play a game not because you have to, but because you enjoy doing so. You use Waze not because there aren’t any other good GPS apps out there that can report to you traffic conditions, hazards, and watchful policemen; you use it because it’s fun and you enjoy the experience the most. And just like Mjolnir, Thor’s mighty hammer known for leveling mountains46, this is no ordinary tool- it evens slays traffic!
Despite the many errors and frustrations leading to inaccuracy, within a few years of its founding, the company was acquired by Google for over $1 Billion Dollars. Not bad for selling a vision.
Your Parents are Bigger Than You!
Some people mistake Octalysis and Gamification as technology solutions that are expensive to implement. In reality, they are design systems focused on motivation. So if the activity relates to motivation, you can apply gamification to it. Just like games – you can play with a complex 3D Virtual World technology like World of Warcraft, or you can play Hide-And-Seek, something that requires no technology at all. Children these days have both World of Warcraft and Hide-And-Seek available, and the last time I checked they still enjoy Hide-And-Seek.
Because of that, we can even apply Octalysis Gamification to things a bit more abstract, such as parenting. Parents often use two main Core Drives to motivate their children to behave well - Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment (reward when the child behaves), as well as Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance (punish/ground when the child does not behave).
However, the Chinese culture has “figured out” how to implement Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling into parenting, through the meaning behind a term known as “孝” . Pronounced “Sheeow,” (or “Xiao” in correct Pinyin spelling, but most people don’t know what to do with the X). It has no direct English translation, but it is a concept that translates into a belief that since the first day of your birth, you are indebted to your parents who you owe your life and existence to. As a result, “孝” mandates that you need to do everything possible to honor them and lift them up.
There are even popular expressions and idioms in Chinese literature such as “不孝之子, 天地不容,” which means, “For a son without ‘孝,’ there is no space/tolerance for him in heaven or earth.” This means that if you do not have “孝 ,” you are such an epic scumbag you don’t even deserve to have ever existed; both the heaven and the earth are so disgusted by your existence they are literally spitting you out of their presence.
Some sources translate the character “孝” to mean “Filial Piety” – “a virtue of respect for one’s parents and ancestors.” Yet, having grown up with this term I feel it goes a long way beyond the word “respect.” When I was little and just started to comprehend the world, I remember reading or listening to the thrilling and sometimes gruesome stories of the well-known children of “孝” in Ancient China. These children would fight tigers to protect their parents, warm up their parents’ mattresses before bedtime, or cut off their own flesh in order to feed their hungry parents. In one story, a sixty year old man of “孝” pretends to play on the ground in a humorous way in order to entertain his eighty-year-old parents. (Note: regardless of the tactics to educate such Epic Meaning & Calling, “孝” is truly a great virtue that is slowly being lost in a globalized “flat world” of instant gratification and self-centeredness).
Other examples of “孝” in the 24 Paragons of Filial Piety47 include:
a man sells himself into slavery to pay for his father’s funeral
a man tastes his sick father’s stool to understand the health of his father
a woman cooks part of her own liver to feed her mother
an eight year old boy attracts mosquitoes to suck his blood so they won’t bother his parents
a father decides to bury his three year old son so he can afford to care for his own mother. While digging the hole, he finds treasure and doesn’t have to kill his son.
While some of these actual stories are disturbing, it illustrates how important ”孝“ is as a value within the culture. Of course, parents aren’t just hypocritically manipulating their children. The children who see their parents treat their grandparents poorly, regardless of whether these stories are told to them, will most likely not buy into the Epic Meaning of 孝. This is an important factor in using the motivation elicited through Core Drive 1 - it must feel authentic.
In Traditional Ancient Chinese Culture, when one’s parents pass away, they need to dress in mourning attire, abstain from all entertainment and sometimes meat, as well as exclude social relationships for three entire years to express his grief. This act is called “守孝”, which literally means “guarding 孝” and was traditionally set to be three years because Confucius stated that it takes three years for us to leave our parents’ arms; hence, it is proper to spend three years mourning for them. Of course, in today’s modern society, much of the three-year mourning is lost and reduced to days or weeks as a symbolic gesture to honor one’s parents.
And because of this culture of “孝,” Asian children grow up feeling that they have to do a lot for their parents – they have to study hard, they have to get into a good school that their parents can be proud of, they have to support their parents throughout life, they should live with their parents to always be available and make sure everything is taken care of for their parents’ life-long wellbeing. As an example, I have a close relative in his fifties who has left his wife and son in the United States for close to a decade now - so he could live with and take care of his aged mother in Taiwan; only visiting his immediate family a few times each year.
In contrast, in many Western societies where the concept of “孝” is not as prevalent, people still respect their parents immensely. However, once they form their own families, they generally become more disconnected and simply bring their children to grandpa and grandma once or twice a year, instead of constantly making life decisions that are tailored to their parents.
Even today, if my parents told me I don’t have 孝 because of any behavior, it would crush me emotionally and motivate me towards almost anything to amend for it. Just because I understand the nature of the motivation does not mean I am exempt from it. It is something deeply ingrained within me and my values. In similar faith, my parents have never made that accusation towards me, because it would be one of the greatest insults a parent could give a child. It is that serious and tangible when it comes to this type of motivation.
Game Techniques within Epic Meaning & Calling
Now that you have the main concept of Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling, the question is how to implement it into your experiences. Below I introduce a few Game Techniques that, if designed correctly, can bring out the sense of Epic Meaning & Calling. Keep in mind, in my terminology, when I mention Game Techniques, I mean techniques that incorporate Game Elements (which includes Game Mechanics) to drive motivation.
You will also start to notice many “Game Technique numbers (#s)” that follow each Game Technique mentioned. These Game
Technique #s are part of a scavenger hunt that originated from my website YukaiChou.com. My readers would try to collect all the numbers, which will one day result in some fascinating things that one can do with Octalysis down the road.
One key thing to remember is that the entire premise behind the Octalysis Design Framework is that one should not be too stuck on game mechanics, game techniques, or any outer appearances of a design. Rather, one should focus on the Core Drives and how it brings out motivation in an actionable manner. The Game Techniques, as well as the associated #s, are all just bells and whistles for great motivational design. If you do not focus on the Core Drives, it will simply have the Shell of an engaging game, not the Essence.
Narrative (Game Technique #10)
Most games start with a narrative that gives the player some context about why they should play the game. Many of them are related to saving the world, a princess, solving a case, or even just helping a dragon or crocodile take a bath. So why don’t we use narrative to give people context in other things?
One of the more effective ways to instill Epic Meaning & Calling into your user base is through an engaging Narrative. This allows you to introduce a story that gives people context for a higher meaning through interacting with your company, product, or website.
Zamzee, a “wearable technology” company for children, uses narratives to instill epic fantasies into children to motivate them to exercise more. Through its online software interface, Zamzee gives kids fantasy quests, such as becoming a sorcerer’s apprentice. In order to learn your first spell, you run up and down the stairs 15 times. Even though the action itself is disconnected from the narrative, just having them make-believe a magical meaning inspires the kids to exercise more because they are now motivated by their own imaginations. Zamzee shows that kids who participate in these imaginary missions move 59% more than kids who don’t48.
