Steve Jobs and the Value of Celebrity CEOs

Yeah Apple. I use one myself: cool, panther-sleek, leopard-brave and consistently, more imaginative than PC suppliers.

Is it just an accident that this is how I see myself  in relation to everybody else?

Don’t answer (on pain of death).

Speaking of Apple, Steve Jobs has just appeared at his first product launch since October 2008.  Jobs is the charismatic Chief Executive of Apple. In 1997 he returned to the helm after a 12 year absence. Under his watch the company has introduced the iMac, the AirBook, the iPod and the iPhone. For stock exchange bean counters, the Jobs era has seen Apple go from strength to strength.  In 1996 its stock was trading at $4 per share. This year the same shares have been trading at the $140 mark.

The economic transformation is largely attributed to Jobs’s wizardry. Mac addicts have become cheerfully accustomed to his much anticipated delivery of  the keynote at the annual MacTrade fair. Dressed in his hall-mark black jeans, designer spectacles and black T shirt, year in and year out he has parleyed a seemingly inexhaustible parade of exciting product innovations and marketing coups that have made the jaws of other Chief Executives in silicone valley drop,  and the mouths of the Apple  faithful and would-be customers drool. Jobs is an obsessive Mac nut, with a legendary temper that brow-beats Apple suppliers and retailers to do his bidding. In the eyes of the Mac faithful, he is a corporate hero, batting relentlessly for the brand.

Corporate executives have swapped the three piece Saville Row suit, Florsheim Imperials and bluff business manner, for a wardrobe and lifestyle more in keeping with those of their clients. Jobs is widely regarded as the very model of the new cool CEO: informal, wry, environmentally concerned, pro-consumer rights, immensely rich and thin.  Pencil-thin, some might say.

By October 2008 he was meaningfully thin, as if something other than worries about the annual company financial report was gnawing away at his innards. People began asking for explanations to account for his gaunt features, dust-mote pallor and skeletal frame.

Jobs announced a suspicious six month sabbatical, with widely regarded less charistmatic figure of Tim Cook covering for him. The Apple press office was uncharacteristically evasive about the whys and wherefores. Typically, their spin doctors gush with celebratory copy about the expanding product line and portentous hints about the earth shaking technical breakthroughs that they are about to reveal. In contrast, the news about the CEO’s health was scant. Rumors of serious illness were met with disclaimers and blase innuendo. The results were  dire. Apple’s shares plunged to $78.20.

The correlation between the economic well being of the company and the health of its Chief Executive are displayed in other areas.  In December 2008, in the midst of his mysterious sabbatical, Apple shares revived after he was allegedly spotted the very model of health in a Palto Alto frozen yoghurt outlet. Similarly, earlier unfounded rumors that he had suffered a heart attack sent the stock plummeting.

We now know that Jobs was seriously ill. In Easter 2009 he received a liver transplant. His return to Apple has been greeted with massive approval by the Stock Exchange and the Mac faithful. But concerns about his long term health have hardly dissipated.

The Jobs story demonstrates the extraordinary close link in the public mind between the celebrity business leader and the cool corporation. The publicity-seeking Richard Branson is the face of Virgin; Oprah Winfrey is the only chief executive to have an academic course created for her (“Oprah: The Tycoon,  History 298″ at the University of Illinois); and the late Anita Roddick was the face, and in death, remains the face of Body Shop.

In the modern cool capitalist corporation the brand is everything. The celebrity CEO defines the brand and does the psychological work of building brand loyalty by choosing the right designer T shirt and delivering pre-selected bon mots. Barely two months after his return, Apple shares have now hit a historic high of $280. In Jobs, Apple has found its Saint George.

The Achilles hell in this business strategy does not take much spelling out. How to manage the succession? The Body Shop has dealt with the question by using the Human Rights and Enviornmental defence  record of Anita Roddick, to turn her into a secular saint of the modern business world. May Jobs live long and prosper. But the challenge of finding a charismatic business leader to redefine the face of Apple after this acerbic, buoyant celebrity CEO departs the scene will be formidable. In modern business it is not just the product that sells, it is also the leader’s face. It instantly confirms the brand in the mind of the public.  What else would you expect in the age of celebrity culture?