Well, the Great Product Launch of 2007 is behind us, and a lot has been said and written about the iPhone. So let’s talk for a minute not about the wondrous new toy itself, but about the smart PR behind it all.
Apple’s rumored 500,000 to 700,000 iPhone sales over their first weekend were driven not only by traditional marketing tactics like big advertising campaigns but in great part by generating an infectious buzz among consumers and the media. Of course, Apple has a great advantage—swarms of loyal fans just dying to see what they’ll come out with next. But Apple earned that advantage in large part by developing products that are truly groundbreaking, elegant in design and are user-friendly to the extreme.
So taking advantage of their position of strength, Apple wisely let frenzied consumers, giddy reporters and the blogosphere at large do much of the talking—a bunch of third-party endorsements for a product no one had even seen, generating a buzz louder than anything Apple could have achieved in the voice of its own marketing department. In fact, too much “sell” from the Apple folks could probably have dampened the excitement—having exactly the opposite of the intended effect.
I’d say this a great example of using the right PR and marketing tools at the right time, and an amazing example of how a strong brand with fanatical customers can reduce a company’s marketing spend. So maybe it’s worth the effort to do that branding/loyalty-building stuff after all…