With the release of the iPad 2, I’ve been doing a lot of research on Apple software, and I’ve noticed something very fascinating about Apple’s marketing strategy: secrecy.
Secrecy is clearly the most important aspect of Apple’s marketing schemes. No one really knows how or what Apple products look like before they’re released. For instance, according to Steve Job’s official website, less than a dozen people working at Apple knew what the iPhone looked like before it was unveiled at Macworld 2007 (not even the software engineers!). The same thing happens with all of the company’s newly released products: “Everything is on a need-to-know basis.” It really got me wondering about how their products are made in the first place, if the workers themselves are not even able to see what they’re doing. Nevertheless, its an extraordinary marketing technique thats so conceptually simple that its effect is almost unnoticeable. Tying in to what we’ve been learning in class, secrecy and the effect of the Apple brand automatically creates hype and rumours about the product, increasing consumer interest in the company (Apple stocks also typically rise around this time), while providing instant advertising, at no cost, for a product that doesn’t even exist yet.
Moreover, when the product is officially released they’re always announced the same way: through promotional videos, flashy images of the product’s many sides, and a presentation from Jobs himself. Not a lot of material for consumers to look at. Apple, in a sense, ‘fans the flames’ by giving its consumers just a few advertising materials to observe and admire, maintaining the hype and excitement, keeping it consistent, before the product is officially made available in stores.
In effect, secrecy is one of the most powerful ways to market a product, and it definitely shows how, in this case, doing nothing can make out to be the perfect strategy.
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