Ad Age has unveiled its very first Marketer of the Decade award recipient: Apple. Although the famous fruit has only won Marketer of the Year once in the past decade (but has been a contender or runner-up nearly every year), the Ad Age staff decided to pull the company out of the running for the 2010 Market of the Year Award and just give it the crown for the whole decade.

As Ad Age notes, the aughts were a pretty magical decade for Apple, starting with the launch of the iPod in October 2001, segueing into the iPhone in 2007 and ending the decade with the successful launch of the iPad. For all the criticism — deserved and not — that Apple as a company gets, it would be hard to argue that marketing is an area it lacks. We can count at least three iconic ad campaigns from the past 10 years:

iPod silhouette print and television ads (circa 2004)

"Get a Mac" campaign with John Hodgeman and Justin Long (circa 2006)

"There's an app for that" (circa 2008)

And that's without even mentioning the 2002 "Switch" campaign featuring proto-meme Ellen Feiss.

Lee Clow: Visionary

Apple's longtime advertising agency, TBWA has been a crucial part of Apple's advertising success. An intrinsic part of TBWA is Lee Clow. Clow, the chairman and global director of TBWA\Worldwide and the former Chief Creative Officer at TBWA\Media Arts Lab — a division created first and foremost to serve Apple — is the man behind the iconic "1984" Macintosh ad, the "Think Different" campaign and the "Get a Mac" ads.

In a recent interview with MAD (Media Arts and Disruption), Clow discusses some of the core elements of Apple's marketing strategy.

"There isn't a single thing Apple does that isn't a message that confirms or reinforces how you feel about the company. I often tell people that the best ad we ever did was the Apple Store. We do great TV commercials, we do wonderful billboards, but you walk into an Apple store and you're now immersed in a brand that's going to change your life."

He continues:

"The reality of the new media world is that if your brand does not have a belief, if it does not have a soul and does not correctly architect its messages everywhere it touches consumers, it can become irrelevant. It can be ignored, or even become a focal point for online contempt."

Frankly, we cannot think of any company that has a more meticulous vision for its branding strategy than Apple. It's also hard to argue that this strategy hasn't been overwhelmingly successful.

Apple surpassed Microsoft in market valuation back in May and crossed the $300 a share mark last week. The company will release its fall quarterly earnings report later this afternoon.

As a company, Apple is certainly more than just branding and marketing, but the branding and marketing reinforces, as Clow states, every other aspect of the company.

What do you think of Apple being named Marketer of the Decade? Does any other brand come close? Let us know.