Inside Steve's Brain - Leander Kahney [48]
It was so successful that Apple didn’t spend a penny to advertise the iPhone before its launch. “Our secret marketing program for the iPhone was none,” Jobs told Apple employees in a companywide address. “We didn’t do anything.”
Of course, there wouldn’t be this kind of attention if the product plans were known ahead of time. The whole stunt relies on secrecy, which is tightly enforced. At San Francisco’s Moscone Center, the Apple booth is shrouded in a twenty-foot-high black curtain. The curtain’s only entrance, at the back, is manned by a guard who carefully checks the credentials of all who try to enter. Two more guards are stationed at opposing corners of the rectangular booth, monitoring the sides. Everything behind the curtain is also wrapped, including the tops of the display stands. Even the main presentation stage, which sits in the center of the booth, is completely wrapped with fabric on all sides. All the advertising banners hanging from the ceiling are wrapped on all sides. The banner wrappings have elaborate pulley mechanisms to remove the curtains after Jobs makes his announcement. There are big banner ads upstairs at the entrance, which are also wrapped in black canvas. The banners are protected 24/7 by guards. One year, the guards caught some bloggers taking pictures and forced them to erase their memory cards. “The urge to clamp down on information sometimes borders on paranoia,” wrote Tom McNichol in Wired magazine.
Several weeks before launch, Apple’s PR department sends the new gadget under strict nondisclosure agreements to three of the most influential technology product reviewers: Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal, David Pogue at the New York Times, and Edward Baig at USA Today. It’s always the same three reviewers, because these three have proven track records of making or breaking products. A bad review can doom a device, but a good one can make it a blockbuster. Mossberg, Pogue, and Baig prepare their reviews for publication on the product’s launch date.
Meanwhile, Apple’s PR department contacts the national news and business magazines, offering a behind-the-scenes “making of ” peek at the product. This “making of ” is usually anything but—most details are withheld—however, it’s better than nothing and the magazines always take Jobs up on it. The reporter hangs out at Apple for a few days and is fed a few details about the product’s backstory for their piece. Putting Jobs’s face on the cover moves magazines on the newsstands. Jobs plays off old rivalries. He pits Time against Newsweek and Fortune against Forbes. The magazine that promises the most extensive coverage gets the exclusive. Jobs uses this same trick time after time, and it always gets results. He started this practice with the original Mac and called them “sneaks,” as in sneak peeks. Familiarizing a reporter with a new product ahead of time usually guaranteed a more favorable review. When Jobs launched a new iMac in 2002, Time magazine got the exclusive behind-the-scenes story, and in return Jobs got the front cover and a glossy seven-page spread inside. It was timed perfectly for the machine’s introduction at Macworld.
During the speech, he always saves the biggest announcement for last. At the end, he’ll say there’s “one more thing,” almost as though it were an afterthought.
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