Apple is awesome. Now let's move on.

I’ve just spent several days listening to presentations at Advertising Week in NYC. And more times than I care to remember, Apple was offered as the poster child for how brands should behave, connect with consumers, focus on experience, be authentic, yada yada.

More so, if I had a nickel for every time in my career that Apple was pointed to in the real world as a guidepost for how it should be done, I could buy a football team.

I get it: they are very good at what they do, and I’m a fan. But let’s face it: they also have iconic products, an $1.8 billion marketing budget, a design-driven culture — we could go on and on.

So my message to marketers is: if you want to point to a brand to demonstrate a best practice, an emerging trend, a best-in-class example — point to someone other than Apple. Because, for most of us, what we have to work with is different to the core.

Rich Feldman