“Technology drives marketing” – Regis Mckenna
Today St Clair Advertising & marketing students waited eagerly in their seats for their Skype connection with one of the biggest names in marketing – Regis Mckenna.
Regis Mckenna is a marketing and technological pioneer. Straight out of college, Regis started his career working in a publishing firm. His college education included a degree in liberal arts while living in Pittsburg at the time. Into his career he moved from Pittsburgh to California and started working for various technological companies. He had a vision to start up his own company and that became a reality after working in the tech industry for a few years. Many do believe he was one of the people who made Silicon Vally what it is today.
Regis started doing business for Apple because one of his former clients was Intel Computers. Gordon Moore one of the co-founders of Intel referred Steve Jobs (who at the time was in the early development stages of Apple) to Regis. Regis was being referred as a marketer even though he only did a minimal amounts of marketing with his company. At the time, Regis’ firm was primarily a PR shop. He and his company helped Apple in the design of their logo and helped create the campaign for the first Macintosh computer. After working in the marketing field and helping Apple, Regis sold his advertising business in 1981 and became known as one of the best marketing advisers in the area.
One of the best insights that students received was getting a better image of Steve Jobs and the brand itself. Regis spoke about how its not the design that makes Apple who they are but in fact it’s the logistics that helped them as a company get to where they are today. He explained that since the beginning of Apple, the company was able to take technology and put it into the hand of the consumer. Apple has created such remarkable products and made it simple for people to operate them. Regis also spoke very highly about Steve Jobs himself saying, “Steve Jobs had the ability to fall and get himself back up” as well as “being articulate and move through areas of technology and innovation“. Regis also stated that Steve learned a whole lot from Pixar and brought back a lot of technological knowledge.
Regis McKenna & Steve Jobs – 5 July 1984
Regis encouraged each student in the room when he said that “you must know yourself in whatever industry that you choose to work in.”
“I loved that he made reference that technology drives marketing” third-year student Connie Yan said. “We should learn more about technology in order to view the big circle“.
St Clair advertising professor Scott Briscoe said. “I found the most fascinating part of the entire presentation not to be the topics on Apple but rather the work Regis did with Intel especially with the microprocessor. He mentioned that early work and those conversations where at the start of the computer age which in turn spawned computer progrogramming. You can see how that shaped technology today“.
Overall Regis gave a great presentation to the St. Clair College Advertising and Marketing students. He spoke on a personal level with the students about his history and experiences in the marketing and technological fields. We would like to thank him again for his time and insight.
Check out the “selfie” we took with Regis McKenna at the end of the presentation!
Photo Gallery
Check out a few pictures we took of the event. As you can see, we had a full house! Thanks to Anna for taking all of the excellent photos!!
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