We continue the series of articles on prominent icons and personalities in the history of Apple that began with Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Partner -this link- Then from our present, Craig Fedrigi, in charge of iOS and Mac systems -this link-. And Apple III founder: Ronald Wayne. Then with the marketing genius Phil Schiller. And its CEO and currently its most important figure -Tim Cook- And this time with the Pepsi genius who fired Steve Jobs John Scully.

[6] Geniuses who made Apple: John Scully

Pepsi era

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John Scully began his career at PepsiCo in 1967 and in 3 years managed to reach the position of Vice President of Marketing in the company, at that time only 30 years old, and became responsible for managing the Cola War, "a term called the Pepsi-Coca-Cola conflict" and Scully decided that Advertising will be the solution. Indeed, he decided to double spending on advertising, as the amount spent on one station reached between 200-300 thousand dollars, while Coca-Cola was spending at the same time 15-75 thousand dollars. Indeed, the company made great progress and compensated for what it lost in favor of Coca-Cola. Therefore, Scully was promoted to take on another problem and challenge, which is the PepsiCo Restaurants and Food sector. “This sector has now become a separate company and includes Kentucky, Pizza Hut and others.” This sector was the only one remaining and had problems in the company, as it achieved losses of $ 16 million annually. Within 3 years the revenues of this division increased to 300 million dollars compared to 83 million previously, while the 18 million losses became 40 million profits. Scully's creativity continued until a decision was made to appoint him CEO of the company in 1977, at the age of only 38, to become the youngest CEO in the company's history.

The Apple Era and Conflict with Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, a rising entrepreneur, knew John Scully, and Jobs faced a crisis at that time, and she is the one who runs Apple, where the Board of Investors refuses to make Jobs the CEO of the company, so Jobs thought about John Scully and said to him the famous saying, "Do you want to continue the rest of your life selling water? Local or join me to change the world? A strange message from Steve Jobs, who is 28 years old at the time, to the director of a company that is one of the largest in the world calling on him to leave the global giant and join a small company compared to Pepsi that started in the world only 7 years ago. But for one reason or another, John Sculley decided to agree and joined Apple.

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The company was at the time experiencing huge losses due to the failure of the Lisa project.this link- He succeeded in managing the production of the new generation of Macs and insisted that the price exceed the amount wanted by Steve Jobs, the "marketing official", and the device achieved good sales. But due to Scully's past experience in marketing and at the same time the ambitions of Steve Jobs, the clash between the two began. Here, the Apple Investors Council met to decide to side with either Steve Jobs and subsequently dismiss Scully or support the new manager. Indeed, the decision was made to stand with Scully. Here, Jobs was fired. "Scully said that Jobs resigned and that one of his biggest wrong decisions was that he agreed to resign and lost Jobs' skills." But Steve did not forget this decision and always commented on it that he became a laughing stock of Silicon Valley because he was the person who was fired from the company he founded by the employee who appointed him. He added that he had appointed the wrong person and that Scully destroyed the Apple he loved.

Scully continued in office for 10 years, and Mac computers at their start achieved great sales, but at the end of the period the company was hit by major crises that prompted Scully to resign in 1993.

Beyond Apple and his personal life

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After Apple, Scully founded the "Scully Brothers" company between 1995 and 2005 and then participated in establishing a number of other companies, although none of them achieved great successes. Scully was born in 1939 and is now 76 years old and married 3 times, the last of them two years ago.

Did you know about John Scully before? Who do you want to write about in Part Seven of the Geniuses Who Made Apple?

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