Apple's vow of silence

BY STEPHEN HUTCHEON

Last updated 12:04 25/06/2009

THINK DIFFERENT: A man shows off his iPhone 3GS, purchased on the first day they were available in the US.

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Some time today outside the Apple Store on Sydney's George Street someone will unfold a camping chair, unpack a vacuum flask and blanket and hunker down for a bracing night sleeping al fresco.

The pay-off will come at 8am tomorrow. The doors to the store will swing open and that person and the others queueing outside will be among the first in Australia to get their hands on a new iPhone 3GS.

Then for the benefit of the breakfast television news crews, they will wave their phones in front of the cameras, releasing a ripple of iPhone envy to percolate through the viewing audience.

Remarkably, Apple will not have advertised the event except for signs inside the store and on its website. Apple has long been admired for its marketing savvy, but much of the buzz generated comes from its legion of diehard fans - unpaid brand ambassadors whose constant spruiking is a priceless asset in Apple's marketing arsenal.

When they set up camp outside an Apple Store, post photos on their Facebook pages or speculate on the latest rumour on one of the many Apple-watching blogs, they are stoking that frisson of excitement and anticipation that has become synonymous with the Apple brand.

Much of that aura stems from the company's obsession with secrecy. While it was originally imposed for competitive reasons, it has also had the side effect of creating an entire self-sustaining, self-absorbed ecosystem on the web that feeds off Apple's information vacuum.

Philip Cookson, a former Apple staff member, says the switch to stealth mode came when the co-founder Steve Jobs returned to the company as chief executive in 1997 after a decade in exile.

Jobs has also just returned to work this week after a six-month layoff during which time he had a liver transplant. As is Apple's want, the operation and Mr Jobs' convalescence was kept secret until late yesterday when his doctor issued a brief statement confirming that the operation had taken place.

Cookson, who now runs a Melbourne consultancy, Philology, said that before Jobs's second coming, Apple "leaked like a sieve".

With information about upcoming products and upgrades leaking out to far in advance, people were deferring buying decisions, inventories of unsold goods were building up and the company was losing money.

"To his credit, Steve [Jobs] stopped this overnight," Cookson says.

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Apple embraced secrecy. Internally, information was restricted on a need-to-know basis. Leakers were threatened with instant dismissal and partners forced to sign restrictive non-disclosure agreements.

Perversely, that information blackout helped to fuel the rumour mill on the web, where scores of Apple-centric blogs and news websites sprang up with names such as AppleInsider, MacTalk, 9 to 5 Mac, MacRumours and the now defunct Think Secret.

That Apple gives so little away between its regular big announcements means that on the blogosphere, at least, there is now more to talk about and to speculate on. And because Apple tends not to confirm or deny rumours, there is no downside for bloggers who get it wrong.

"Apple operates behind a wall of silence and in turn that feeds its talkability," says Frank PR Australia's managing director, Myfanwy McGregor, referring to the chatter or buzz that the company generates.

But, she says, it is able to sustain that high level of viral awareness only because of the reputation it has developed for producing cutting-edge products and services. "If the product wasn't good enough that buzz would soon die off."

Apple's other stroke of genius, she says, is to keep positioning itself as a challenger brand when in fact it is now a mature and well established one - with a big business behind it.

"When they started Apple were a small fish in a big pond and the key to their success is that they still act this way, although they now dominate the pond."

- © Fairfax NZ News