One Identity, Two Storylines The evolution of Apple’s organizational identity in the face of corporate branding through advertisemen

Relatively little attention has been given to the process of evolution of Apple from a disruptive brand towards a morally and culturally invested company. Specifically, there are few studies on Apple identity and advertising. Furthermore, how organizational and brand identity interact and how identity change can be facilitated through mediated communication are not yet fully understood. This thesis aims at understanding the evolution of Apple’s communication through commercials over the past 36 years. By linking together advertisement and organizational identity change, the thesis investigates how Apple managed its corporate identity through the lens of organizational identity. The goal of this thesis is, thus, to answer the following question: How and why has the organizational identity of Apple evolved from being a disruptive brand to a moral and culturally invested brand, while preaching the same ideals through advertisement? The thesis applies semiotic analysis and critical discourse analysis to 14 of Apple’s audio-visual commercials, from 1984 till the present day, to generate a detailed overview of how Apple has evolved its corporate identity through advertising. The use of this multimodal methodology uncovers the (in)consistencies in the flow of meaning construction as it allows us to analyse the discursive strategies in the process of identity construction. Accordingly, the visual corpus is first investigated through semiotics to disclose any hidden discursive regimes of meaning, after which the cumulative findings of the overall corpus outline the process of identity construction and change throughout the timeframe of the corpus. The results reveal that the construction and expression of the Apple organizational identity are done through the use of the discursive regimes of utopia and dystopia in two very distinct ways. First, the discursive regimes of technological utopia and dystopia are used as strategies to push the world forward towards technological utopia and technological integration. Second, the discursive regimes of societal utopia and dystopia are used to portray Apple’s technology as tools to create a better world, shifting the discourse from technology/innovation driven to humanitarian. These two strategies reflect the shifting social tensions surrounding the technological stigma of personal computing within the domestic sphere. With its focus on the usability of technology, Apple has managed to usher in the era of the technology-infused society as we know it today. Due to their capable advertisement campaigns, Apple has dismantled the anti-technological discourse through the use of technological utopianism and dystopianism as discursive strategies to market their products.