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A ship that leaks from the top
[Quote:]
Monday’s article at the Wall Street Journal, which provided confirmation of an Apple tablet device, had all the earmarks of a controlled leak. Here’s how Apple does it.
Often Apple has a need to let information out, unofficially. The company has been doing that for years, and it helps preserve Apple’s consistent, official reputation for never talking about unreleased products. I know, because when I was a Senior Marketing Manager at Apple, I was instructed to do some controlled leaks.
The way it works is that a senior exec will come in and say, “We need to release this specific information. John, do you have a trusted friend at a major outlet? If so, call him/her and have a conversation. Idly mention this information and suggest that if it were published, that would be nice. No e-mails!”
The communication is always done in person or on the phone. Never via e-mail. That’s so that if there’s ever any dispute about what transpired, there’s no paper trail to contradict either party’s version of the story. Both sides can maintain plausible deniability and simply claim a misunderstanding. That protects Apple and the publication.
In the case of yesterday’s story, Walt Mossberg was bypassed so that Mr. Mossberg would remain above the fray, above reproach. Also, two journalists at the WSJ were involved. That way, each one could point the finger at the other and claim, “I thought he told me to run with this story! Sorry.”
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When I read this, I wondered why Apple would want to create such a leak. The post you sourced this from mentions a few.
I’m torn whether I find them compelling. One of the suggestion motivations is to get ahead of a competitor in the news headlines. Indeed, there are the predictions that Msft + HP will announce a tablet today.
Frankly, I’d be just as happy if everyone would shut up until there’s actually news to report. I find nothing as boring as an endless post on Daring Fireball in which Gruber goes on at length to showcase how clever he thinks his predictions are. I really don’t care if you have good sources or can predict what’s going to be announced. Wake me up when there’s an official announcement.
/sets alarm clock for January 27th…
It reminds me of the paper releases we’ve seen ATi and nVidia do in the past. The competition was fierce, the focus on which brand had the fastest GPU. They started leaking test results, showing off their upcoming products. Then the official release news came – months ahead of any chips really hitting stores. The public grew tired of these ‘paper’ releases, and both companies got a lot of criticism. Then finally, the next marketing step was to officially release the product the day it was available in the stores.
Endless discussions about vaporware like the Apple tablet are pointless imo if being done by any other than the R&D dept of Apple itself. Getting excited about products that don’t exist is exactly what the folks in the marketing dept want. Even discussing that the leak is not really a leak serves the same purpose. Shouldn’t this also be filed under ‘if you’re in marketing…’?