Apple’s public relations (PR) department is probably the best in the world – certainly more impressive at shaping and controlling the discussion of its products than any other technology company. Before customers get their first chance to see or touch a new Apple product, the company has carefully orchestrated almost every one of its public appearances: controlled leaks and advance briefings for favored writers, an invite-only media debut, and a special early review process for a group of pre-screened, known-positive writers. Nothing is left to chance, and in the rare case where Apple doesn’t control the initial message, it remedies that by using proxies to deliver carefully crafted, off-the-record responses.
A well-written article by Mark Gurman, detailing Apple’s PR practices. Especially the parts about how Apple carefully manipulates journalists, bloggers, and newspapers is very interesting. We all know that they do this, of course, but it’s great to see it all penned down like this.
It’s a long read, but definitely worth it.
Apple manipulates presstitutes? Say it ain’t so!
None of this affects product quality or customer satisfaction.
I haven’t read the article about PR yet, but PR and marketing are about hype and getting people to check out your product.
Design, implementation, and long-term value are what keep customers happy in a free market.
Some of you seem to propose that Apple tricks people into buying inferior products using flashy marketing and I’d argue it’s just the opposite. Almost all Apple ads show the product doing what it does in near-real speed. Their stores allow customers to try, then buy, and are happy to know they invested in an honest product.
What Apple does is control “the message” nearly as good as they control “the product”. The end result is “the customer” is happy and keeps buying more Apple products at that high margin.
It’s a winning formula if they keep the quality of design and manufacturing up. Their stock and that cash reserve prove my point.
Curious. This is not mentioned anywhere in the article, the comments, or the blurb.
It’s a common accusation on this site (and others that wade into OS battles). I agree they run a tight PR ship, I would not want to leak or otherwise cross Apple PR’s apparatus.
But it’s just PR. If they made sugar water or some other commodity they would rely on that PR, along with supplier prices, to determine their fate. But Apple makes complex little things – physical items that people rely on 24/7. There is no room for low quality trumped up through marketing.
Covering Apple’s “tightly controlled” PR and advertising departments often times implies they need that marketing to cover up poor quality or a bad value proposition.
It is implied by the title of the article: “Seeing through the illusion…”
ezraz,
Really? Not many people around here say apple’s products are inferior… often overpriced yes, but inferior?
They do excellent job making apple products seem more special than they actually are. If you haven’t figured it out, they are a target for mockery not because of their product quality (which is often very good), but because of their egotistical attitude. Some people find it charming, other people find it repulsive.
This is just me, but personally I don’t like the attitude attached with apple’s products. Popularity & image don’t interest me either, I prefer to think differently (ironically enough).
I get your sentiment. I like my products to just work for years regardless of marketing or trends of the moment. I couldn’t care less about who uses what unless we have to trade documents or otherwise work together. If Apple didn’t have a review or an ad anywhere I’d still buy many of their products based on my own experience and basic comparative shopping.
Glad to see some people think Apple’s are just over-priced and not of poor quality. How much are you willing to pay for quality?
I have read accusations of Apple making the same products as everyone else but “putting them in a shiny box” and this implies anyone who purchases an Apple product is an idiot. This is false because, I sir, am no idiot. ;-).
23 years of buying Apple’s has resulted in 1 monitor that died 1 day after it’s warranty expired, and 2 iPhone 1’s that had bad headphone jacks. In all three of these instances Apple replaced the item with no cost to me, as fast as physically possible.
I use my products in some mission-critical settings, day in day out. I need something reliable and with good support. I run Win7 with OSX so I can get to development environments that aren’t mac friendly. I’m 5 miles from an Apple store if something really bad happens with my Apple hardware, but it usually doesn’t.
I am just pre-empting the discussion for once – I usually show up 3 days after it’s dead to defend macbooks and iOS devices.
Am I the only one who notices that, about an article on Apple PR and Marketing, ezraz quickly jumps in and carries testimonial water for Apple? Q.E.D., and LOL.
Edit: even before anyone bashes Apple product?
Edited 2014-08-29 21:56 UTC
pre-emptive strike.
OSNews UNIX nerd reactions are predictable because the article plays up the concept that apple products are sold through trickery.
no discussion about value, quality, or build. so i thought i’d throw that in.
linux and developer conferences in the US have been full of macbook pros for many years now. Guess apple just sells better in the states than outside.
but it isn’t because people are being lied to or tricked about the quality.
For many years I’ve watched other PC makers try to compete with Apple, usually 6-8 months after apple, with something that looks like it, is branded like it, but just ain’t as well built.
There could be a literal graveyard full of Apple knockoffs from just about every other computer company on the planet.
You obviously never owned an LC series, G3 Cube or any other of the dozens of POS products Apple has created over the years.
and you obviously couldn’t think of a crappy product within the last 14 years.
overheating MacPros?
overheating macbook pros?
all their mice?
iTunes?
ipods?
that’s a weak list.
— how many overheating mac-pro’s – can you show me numbers? can you show me the data? which model, more than one model? what percentage of mac pros get returned for hardware failure? i’ve seen some of the numbers and apple has nothing to be ashamed of.
— same with the laptops. they all get hot, and have since the early 90’s. how many actually fail. how many of those are because of a bad batch of batteries? show me the numbers, show me how apple laptops get returned at a higher rate than anyone else? you can’t because they don’t.
— all their mice — one button = bad. everything else about their mice, good or better than most. one button is a design decision, not a quality decision.
— iTunes – that’s software buddy, based on 16 year old MP3 player code. I ain’t the biggest fan of iTunes either but it does a lot and can’t easily be replaced. i rarely have stability issues with it, my grunts are usually about the lack of a power feature i need to manage my digital media.
— iPods – HAHA yeah, what a horrible piece of kit that was, right? perhaps the most successful and imitated electronics gadget of the last 50 years.
Your list is a disaster because every other computer company would be totally transformed if they shipped anything from your list (except the mice).
MacBooks, MacPros, iTunes, iPods — these are best in class devices that sell for a healthy margin, achieve high customer satisfaction and repeat purchases.
Maybe yall’z outside of america just don’t get the point of capitalism. You are supposed to sell a good product at a fair margin and provide enough cost-effective service to keep the customer happy and ultimately buying more from you in the future.
Apple designs their own products. They sell their own products. They pay their employees well. They support their products. They make a healthy margin.
And since this profit doesn’t feel like greed (they sold you a good reliable product) customers line up to buy more.
This is in no way a failure. Customers happy, employees happy, shareholders happy.
Virtually every Apple product ever made has some serious design flaws. However many Apple owners are so emotionally committed to their purchases that they live in a permanent state of denial.
If you think America invented capitalism you are kind of ignorant. I think most of the world gets it except some. Capitalism is a religion.
Nobody said it was a failure. People just said Apple products are not perfect or made by god. You are overly deffensive and you prove the point of many who say that Apple customers are indoctrined.
Edited 2014-09-01 06:57 UTC
If they’ve been making “usually high quality” products for almost 40 years,
If they score the highest customer satisfaction rating of any computer company year after year,
& If in the last decade they’ve made more profit and gained more marketshare than any other technology company,
I don’t see that as arrogance, I see that as performance.
Remember, Apple bragged about their design and build quality when their finances were a mess. It was much more hyperbole back then because you were really “thinking different” and taking a risk by investing in the platform.
But now that Apple is UNIX, iOS is the mobile standard-bearer, and their distribution and purchase cycles are managed properly, Apple makes profit where others give away products. Apple stays about quality while others chase the bottom of the market.
Which is one of the reasons I loath hanging around other Mac users – the inability for many to accept that there are great products out there made by other companies and that Apple doesn’t always get it right. For me I have an iPhone but I’ve also looked at an HTC One M8 and it is a gorgeous phone with a well crafted Android bundled with Sense that I always check out and compare the latest iPhone release to because honestly, if given the opportunity and the iPhone 6 turns out to be a right fizzer I know I always have a backup plan. Don’t get me wrong, I love running OS X but I’m also well aware of the issues that OS X has along with iOS having its own faults – end of the day it is picking your poison.
Edited 2014-09-03 16:58 UTC
Once I recommended Apple …but this turned me away; preferring not to be associated with that attitude, people representing it.
You apparently underestimate the power of marketing (or in Apple’s case, market/press manipulation). People are gullible, especially when it comes to a company/brand. Proof of this is easy: just look at how rabid all the Apple fan boys become, how the zealots come crawling from all over to defend their fruity company the minute anyone says anything slightly negative about Apple. It’s not for nothing that they call it an Apple “religion” or “cult”. This is also well-known within the company itself.
Thom — See?
I posted about product quality and customer satisfaction. Real world important issues. Not media-based pop culture name calling.
This has been equated to being a “fanboy”, a rabid cult member of the fruity company. A zealot.
How about small-business IT purchaser? How about a person who studies ROI and user support costs for mobile workers?
To restate — the reaction *to* Apple by those that dislike it as a brand is stranger to me than the reaction *from* those that happily buy Apple products. I guess that’s why I started this thread. I was trolling a bit, but you know, it’s Friday 🙂
The people buying the Apple stuff are getting class-leading items and obviously enjoying them because they rank them high and buy again. The people heckling Apple users are strange and socially inept in my opinion. It’s just a computer. Apple isn’t putting any of your favorite companies out of business. Vote with your wallet. Namecalling gets you nowhere.
Uhm…no. They are not “class-leading” by any stretch of the imagination. Their marketing department might sway you to believe this, however. It appears you have also fallen into their reality distortion field and fail to see the reality of the situation.
I have another, very current and damning example of this. Let’s take a closer look at the Beats acquisition. No one, and I do mean NOBODY in the audio business (that is, mastering engineers, speaker engineers, DAC/AMP engineers, serious musicians, etc.) would use Beats as a headphone. This is not me saying this, just do a Google search and you’ll quickly find hundreds of documented cases where the audio produced by Beats hardware is simply ATROCIOUS!
Now why would you think Apple, if they’re a “class-leading” company as you claim, be interested in some POS audio company? Let me answer that for you: because Beats has the same kind of marketing that appeals to Apple – produce a mediocre product, LIE to everyone that it’s the best thing in the world, raise prices absurdly high to make it look like a high-end/elite product and laugh all the way to the bank.
If Apple was really serious about improving their headphones (audio-wise), they could have bought a myriad of companies that excel in this area: Sennheiser, Beyerdynamic, AKG, Fostex, Grado, etc. Their recent acquisition of Beats just continues their tradition mentioned above. Is their strategy money-making? It sure is. Are they popular because they are “class-leading”? Sure as hell not!
So get your facts straight. I know it is tough to look through all their BS, but if we want to have an insightful discussion, this is a must. And no one is name-calling here, fan boys and zealots are the pillars of Apple”s industry. Without them, their marketing would be a catastrophic failure for the general public.
Well, I just installed a custom Mac Mini to go along with my assorted other Apple gear, so I guess that makes me an Apple fan. But, I wouldn’t spend a dime on Beats cans….not when I already own and enjoy Sennheiser and KEF headphones. I would say there are Apple-using customers of all variations. Their marketing is what it is, but the products stand on their own useful excellence, IMHO.
Beats acquisition is the “new” market-leading Apple, and it’s an acquisition that I think is far more about branding than tech. So I agree with you. Anyone could make better headphones than Beats (and many do) but the kids like that brand and Apple wanted in.
But it’s one acquisition of a tiny headphone company, it’s not nearly an important part of Apple whole business.
I started this talk about how marketing and favorable reviews have nothing to do with retaining customers.
Repeat buyers.
The term “sheeple” has been invented to now degrade someone who is happy enough with a product that they buy a new one.
It’s sad the names you have come up with the describe people who buy a certain type or brand of something.
Imagine if i called you a name based on your shoe brand? Your car brand? The brand of the door on your house? Lame.
It’s sad. Some of you people have your head in the sand. There are literally hundreds of reviews of every new Apple product, page after page of praise, criticism, and review. We are inundated with it. And guess what, they get a star rating just like every other product. And the consumer still has to crack big cash to buy something.
But if they buy Apple? If they keep buying Apple? Let’s call them names.
UNIX geeks are the most insecure types, I swear.
Many of those ‘repeat buyers’ are so brainwashed that they never even considered an alternative product.
That’s exactly what they do, charge premium prices for aggregating everyone else’s work into theirs and then having the audacity to claim its worthy of a patent
iPhone = HP IPAQ + Cellular radio
Since IPAQ and had WiFi, the cellular part was an obvious next step, then came what to make it look like and along came Sony with an open design they presented to Jobs. Amazingly the judge did not allow that information to admitted in trial, but then again Apple owns the bay area.
So no, they don’t fool everyone, just the sheep.
You could do cellular on Ipaq by way of a PC Card jacket and matching “modem”.
One sentence…you’re holding it wrong.
Sorry case closed,that one sentence blows away your quality theory. BTW if you’d like another how about Samsung shaming them into replacing their known defective batteries? Farther back? How about the dodging they did with their units affected by Nvidia Bumpgate? Swearing up and down that Apple couldn’t possibly have malware and it was the USER to blame when MacDefender was spreading like the clap?
Sorry but Apple is NO DIFFERENT from HP or Dell or any of the others, in fact you can get comparable build quality from the other guys, often with the same or even better parts, for less cash, Apple is just good at brand selling is all.
Don’t get me wrong, if you like paying a premium for a designer label? That is fine, everyone is allowed their own tastes, just as I buy ASUS and Asrock even when there are cheaper alternatives simply because I like the brands and their software….but don’t delude yourself that because its a fancy brand it is somehow “better”, its the same Intel parts everybody else gets, just put in a fancy cases with a hefty markup, that’s all.
BTW as for their “great support” I just had to send a customer over 150 miles to a little shop in the middle of nowhere because Apple won’t support their own older Macbook Airs, he went to the Apple store only to get told “we don’t support those anymore” followed by an attempt to sell him another…while he is having the air fixed because of how much money he sunk into it he had me pick him up a nice $900 Toshiba, purrs like a kitten BTW.
So if you consider “support” to be “as long as we are selling that model” then their support is okay, funny though most folks don’t toss $3k laptops every other year.
I switched from BSD to OS X. Apple had just release OS 10.2 (Jaguar I believe) and it was a stable system with better software support that still let have me the things I loved about BSD (Oddly, I had not tried Linux yet). And thus in 2003, I became the only person at my technology school to be working on an Apple. I watched my image from freshman to senior year somehow transformed from, “He must not know how to actually use a computer!” to, “He must come from a rich family.”
All this “Apple hate” for being ‘aloof’ is actually part of the marketing. I (oh no, hipster moment) switched to Apple before it was cool, and back then they were mocked as computers for the technologically ignorant. Now they’re mocked for being associated with snobbery, which plays right into the elite mentality that Apple is selling. I’ve since switched away from Apple products, but whenever you rage at pompous Apple users, you make yourself look like an ass because you’re playing right into the image they’re selling.
Edited 2014-08-29 20:07 UTC
Who cares about what people think about Apple? I care about facts and not opinions from people who know nothing about technology and/or are Apple haters.
I work as Unix admin (AIX, Solaris and RedHat) since 2001… I think I know something about that matter… and IMHO OSX is the best desktop Unix ever created, it’s 10 years ahead of everything else. In addition to that Mac laptops/desktops are pretty good hardware too. It’s very clear for me: a Mac is the best tool for the job that I do.
If people think I’m stupid, snob or rich (wtf!?)… I don’t give a shit. I use the best because I can.
Um.. “best desktop Unix”?
That’s like being the tallest goat (and not being a giraffe), or being the biggest fish (and not being a whale), or having the fastest bicycle (that isn’t a motorbike).
– Brendan
Well… I think you have a point here. In my particular case, I don’t care about not unix-based OSes (just because they are useless to me).
That’s why I said Mac OSX is the best “unix desktop”, because unix is what I know best and what I’ve always used.
Maybe Windows 8 or OS/2 Warp are better desktops than Mac OSX… I don’t know and I don’t care. They are not my cup of tea.
Which is technically the same thing
This. We all play into it.
I try to mention over and over that mac laptops running UNIX/OSX/Windows are consistently the best made, and have been since the 90’s. Certain people react to this as snobbery or idiocy or whatever, but they are far more influenced by the marketing than most purchasers of Apple products.
Repeat customers don’t care about marketing or hype, they care about the performance of the item over it’s lifetime.
ezraz,
Honestly now, when apple users are pompous, aren’t they the ones who look look like an ass? I really don’t mind if people want to use apple/ms/linux/etc, but leave pompous attitudes at the door, please! I’d say the same thing about any platform fanboys, but for whatever reason it’s usually the apple fanboys who are the most overly defensive bunch of them all.
Yet there’s often a tendency to turn a blind eye when apple falls short. Sometimes apple products aren’t the best and sometimes they do have widespread problems.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-gpu-apple-macbook-pro,15395…
http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/20/tech/mobile/iphone-4-antenna-settleme…
http://trick77.com/2008/01/13/uneven-imac-displays/
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1374446?start=0&tstart=0
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/21/apple_display_lawsuit/
http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/20/3363914/wrong-turn-apple-ios-6-ma…
I’m sure you can find more if you research it. This isn’t to suggest that apple products are terrible, they’re not. The exaggeration of apple greatness is what gets so tiresome. Sometimes apple products are lemons. It’s not something to get overly defensive about, just consider that a more balanced perspective would yield far less of the reaction against apple fanboys that you are complaining about.
Edited 2014-08-29 22:44 UTC
Apple’s hate most often comes from a strawman.
Look at the 2nd post of this comment section from ezraz for a very ironic instance of this.
It was the 2nd post and the 1st post didn’t mention anything like this. The “some of you” he is talking about is a strawman.
I don’t think the “Apple haters” people are talking about actually exist but you are right, they play into Apple’s marketing strategy.
Edited 2014-08-30 19:08 UTC
This really isn’t news. That’s why it’s almost impossible to find any review critical of any Apple products.
All the popular tech blog sites are clearly, perhaps unwittingly, an extension of Apple’s PR campaign.
I’ve read reviews of Apple products that look like marketing material straight out of Apple. It’s shameful really.
What is shocking, is that 9to5Mac actually posted this. They’re definitely going to be blacklisted by Apple for a couple of years if they aren’t already.
I’m impressed by the no-fucks-given attitude and depth of research of the article.
Kudos to 9to5Mac.
It’s not just Apple, all major tech corporations do the same in some form or another, be it google, microsoft, or intel.
Tech “journalist” (using the term really loosely in this case) can’t bad mouth the product in their reviews because if they do so, they lose access to the vendor in question in two crippling fashions: they may be left out of the product review cycles and thus nobody will bother checking your “late” review, or advertisers may pull out of your site in they perceive it to be hostile to their PR narrative and you won’t have any revenue to pay the bills.
This is not only contained to the tech field in the least. Same with politics for example; say something the peeps at the government (which ever party or position is irrelevant) don’t like and you will lose access. Without access you don’t have any news, unless you do the ground work yourself but that is hard and “nobody got time for that.”
Whatever little integrity the journalistic profession had (which was never that much to begin with) went off the door with the switch to electronic delivery of free content, which is subsidized by ads.
There is no more journalism, there is just marketing. A brave new world…
Leo Laporte seemed to have a reputation for doing that.
I’ve read reviews of Apple products that look like marketing material straight out of Apple. It’s shameful really.
That could be truthfully said about reviews for a very large number of products and not just those made my Apple. It is the aim of the PR People to do just this very thing.
Sadly many ‘hacks’ are far too lazy and illiterate to write a decent and coherent review themselves so they take the easy way out…
I don’t think Apple has any problem with that kind of article. On the contrary, I think this article plays very well with the message they are trying to convey.
In the 2nd post, ezraz said:
This is actually affecting customer satisfaction, in a positive way. Marketing is not necessarily about abusing customers. On the contrary, it’s about making your consumers feel their product is premium. People don’t buy Ferraris or Lamborghinis for the horse power (there are cheaper cars with more horse power than those). They buy it for the prestige. People also buy Apple products for the prestige and Apple’s marketing is what is ensuring their prestige.
The passage about working close with Jobs could make one think oneself a mini-steve makes me think of Andy Rubin.
Apple has a big event coming up, time for another sort-of hit piece on the company, their practices, marketing tactics, company policies, etc etc etc. Right on cue. Not really a hit piece per se, but it gets the Apple-fan/Apple-opposers out and creates page views and a LONG discussion.
Edited 2014-08-30 10:53 UTC
Apple doesn’t need to trick anybody into buying its inferior, overpriced products. Sheeple will buy Apple because all of their friends do. They think they’re so cool when really they’re just basic. These are the same people who care what others think and are afflicted with the shiny penny syndrome. People who care about value go with a PC/Android device that has three times the horsepower at a third the price of Apple.
Why do you think everyone cares about price ? Some people don’t give a damn about the price tag and simply buy what they feel like.
oh i see.
yet nothing you say about me is true and i’ve been buying apple’s since the 90’s.
So what?
All companies do it, in one way or another, not only Apple.
But, as usual, Apple are either getting creds for something or they get all the shit about something.
Of course everybody does it or wish they would do it. The point of this article is that Apple does it more and better than anybody else.