Who says marketing and PR doesn’t involve superpowers? If you ask Steve Jobs, I’ll bet he’d say that marketing and PR can be better than the actual product itself. Of course, we’ve all seen this in one or another. Some new product is hyped up in the media and the ads are all flashy and glamorous, then we get the product and it sucks. We’ve been hornswaggled!
Take the iPhone, for example. Thank goodness Apple already has a great following, or the launch of its iPhone could have toppled the company. (Yes, that’s an exaggeration for Apple, but what about an unknown company creating all this hype for a product that didn’t deliver? I doubt start-ups or lesser-known companies would have survived.)
Although there were much better phones out on the market when the iPhone launched, it still sold millions in the United States. Of course, tech geeks knew the iPhone wasn’t as good as others, like the LG Viewty, so they either stayed away or bought the iPhone out of pure curiosity (maybe I should be doing something in tech since these people could buy something that cost $500 or $600 out of curiosity!). The initial iPhone had low memory options when compared to other phones on the market, and it also didn’t come with 3G. These are reasons why the iPhone wasn’t selling in Europe and other countries and the UK’s Sunday Times even reported potential losses to stock owners when the iPhone first came out.
But, the hype of the iPhone, with Steve Jobs at the launch and the marketing and PR teams creating a buzz on blogs and viral videos as well as offline avenues like newspapers, everyone still wanted the iPhone. Many dismissed those that said the iPhone wasn’t as good as its competitors as Apple haters.
And within two months of the launch, the price was slashed by a third, and Jobs even offered up an apology to his customers after all of the complaints about the phone. He then offered a $100 Apple credit to all those who bought the 8GB version of the phone. This PR move put out the fire that could have burned a hole through a lot of Apple’s best customers – the early ones who don’t wait for all the bugs to be worked out. Even though people were upset, the PR move and the early marketing made customers loyal, and forgiving. This just goes to show what great marketing can do for any product, even one that people don’t like.
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