How Apple Creates Media Hype To Get Wide-Scale Advertising For Free

Apple products garner huge publicity even though the company is amongst the lowest spenders on advertising. The launch of the much awaited iPhone 5 saw huge queues even before the stores opened. How does Apple manage to create the hype and the speculation?

Their modus operandi to get virtually free advertising is practice that even though predictable and well known finds gullible and naive journalists falling into their trap.

The process begins with Apple revealing “off-the-record,” inside information to their favorite journalists. As is likely, the confidential information will soon start making the rounds and rumors will abound about a fantastic Apple gadget that is going to hit the markets soon.

This is followed by Apple selectively leaking photos and drawings, many of which are make-believe and fictitious.

Then comes the launching date, journalists will assume their own date, whilst the company will keep everyone waiting saying that the official announcement will be made and it is coming soon.

Having managed considerable hype on anticipation and expectancy, the company then announces with trumpeted fanfare that they would be holding a news conference where they would be launching the product amongst a selected gathering.

Given public interest, the media is present in full force. The news conference follows a typically pattern, you’ve seen one Apple launch, you’ve seen them all.

It starts with singing paeans about what a great company Apple is and how visionary its founders were and what wonderful gadgets they make. They rattle of very impressive figures of past successes and then with the flair of a magician unveil their new product.

Under the watchful ministering of glib talking Apple personal relations people, the journalists are then invited to inspect the new gadget and all its qualities are explained to them.

Some of the chosen few are given the device to take home with them and check it for themselves and see if it is really what the company is flaunting. This ensures that the device is never out of the news.

With hard sell on a high and propaganda at its peak, Apple opens up online pre-order sales and the products are lapped up almost immediately.

One or two days before the gadget becomes available in the stores, reviews mysteriously appear online and without an exception all are extremely generous in their praise of the new device.

Stories also appear of how people are camping outside Apple stores to ensure that they don’t miss out and how a celebrity called up the company and asked for the product on a priority basis but was told that he should get one like everyone else did.

There has never been an Apple launching at the stores and the media not carrying information about how the crowds were virtually uncontrollable and the chaotic excitement that prevailed.

The truth is that there are other companies making products that are as good as those made by Apple, yet the hype about Apple products would make one think that they were the ultimate producers and the rest were just those who followed the standards set by them.

Apple knows how to manipulate them and they do so well, after all it is their job to maximize buyer’s interests in their products. Apple cannot be held responsible for what they are doing. It is the fanatical media that is eating out of their hands and being obsessed with them and their products.