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Apple's Ad Agency Goes After Mac Rumour Sites
lythari writes "ZDNet is reporting that Apple's advertising agency is threatening several publications carrying Apple ads to stop printing Apple rumours or else Apple will stop advertising with them. " Hmmm...can you say "Bad Karma"?
Apple can spend their advertizing dollars where ever they want, but not spending them at the rumors sites would be stupid. Further, trying to stop the rumor sites is stupid. Consider:
1) People that use Macs are often fanatics (I am not using the word in a bad way, I simply mean that people that buy Macs tend to be "Mac owners" people that buy PC's (with a number of exception) tend to be "people that have computers"). They actually are interested in their platform above and beyond its usefulness as a tool.
2) Because of this they tend to hang around on Mac sites (rumor based or otherwise). They enjoy these sites, they like to learn about their platform.
3) By carrying out this threat Apple is doing three things (Well, more than that, but I choose to list these three): Pissing off the people that own, run and work on the sites, most of whom are Mac fans and users, but may well turn against a company that repeatedly treats them like crap. Pissing off users who will have to either watch their favorite sites cave and become less interesting or stand up and loose money, all because of a company that both the user and the site try to support. Loosing advertiseing eyeballs in a group that is most suseptable to buying their product.
So basically they are choosing a route that decreases the value of their marketing and risks alienating some of their greatest supporters in an effort to control rumors, which as often as not serve as advertising in and of themselves. Do we see a hole in this theory?
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
i'm a die-hard apple fan, or at least i was. i go back to a 128 in 1984 and a //e in 1980. but i'll say this, apple sure is alienating their fans these days. jobs may have been good for pulling apple out of a rut, but he doesn't seem to have the ability to manage things as they flow along.
since he's taken over he's managed to:
kill the clones
kill the newton
bring back the closed, all-in-one, non-upgradable mac (iMac and Cube)
throw NeXTOS on top of new hardware (sorry OSX is NeXT in mac's clothing)
threaten to sue a few dozen web sites
just about squash publication of a book that doesn't portray him as a god
act like a spoiled brat when ATI let the cat out of the bag a little early (like we didn't know anyway?)
Sell out Apple to Microsoft.
Piss off game developers.
Piss off 3rd parties with constant color switches.
Failed to give the users/consumers many of the things they have asked for, 6 slot systems, voice recgonition, multi-button mice, etc.
Turn Apple's once great, free support into clueless, expensive, too-long-on-hold waste of time (example: call up with a broken mouse and they insist you reinstall the OS. hello??? yes, this happened to me. their tech support are clueless and only know how to read a script)
sue their own (ex)employees
go from a happy-friendly image to one of a closed, grey corporate environment.. kinda like what they didn't want in their 1984 ad. hmm.. Is that jobs we now see on the big screen?
What's up with this? I think someone needs to take Jobs over their knee and spank him a few times. Doesn't he know how to play nice with everyone else? Apple's market share sucks and by pissing off the only fans and users they have it's going to drop even more.
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And i'll say it again. Apple's historical behavior is far worse than Microsoft ever dreamed of being. The only reason no one cares about Apple's shinanigans is that they have been so incompetent at become a monopoly.
Can you imagine the uproar if Microsoft used their advertising dollars to try and influence editorial content?
I detest Apple-the-company, but ironically I'm excited about Apple's products for the first time since, well, 1984 (the release of the Mac). The Open Source community really, really needs to take what is good about OS/X (such as the XML-based configurations, perhaps the rendering system) and get the good ideas. Otherwise I may be tempted to someday get a Unix-based Mac. I really want a Unix-based desktop system that has a reasonable set of business applications, but not at that price (figuratively and literally).
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Folks,we might think it's silly.. but this is not 'evil'.
Apple isn't threatening to sue; Apple isn't threatening to abuse the courts to kill 'the little guy'. Apple is saying 'We don't agree with your putting up rumors, so we've decided that unless you stop doing it, we cannot advertise with you anymore'. This is called VOTING WITH YOUR MONEY.
Why should apple advertise with someone who is doing something they don't agree with? For the same reason you should buy music from a band you don't agree with?
It's not the fans that Steve Jobs doesn't want to know what Apple is doing. It's the competitors who, if they would find out what Apple is planning, would announce that you should what 3 more years because MS^H^H, er the competition, is going to be releasing the exact same thing, but better.
I'm sure that if Steve Jobs had a way of letting the fans know about developments without the "competitors" being able to make claims that would cause non-fans to not buy Apples products, he'd do that. But I think for know, if you really want Apple to be successful for you, you need to support Apple and work with them.
-BrentFor the same reason Apple is not 'forced' to pay these people to put up advertising.
If the Site values editorial content over the money Apple pays it for ads, then they won't buckle. If they DO need apple that badly as a client, then they'll buckle (and so they should if their livleyhood depends on apple)
They should be happy to get the fsking publicity.
-Omar
What's the harm of someone getting excited over a rumored product-to-be?
Plenty.
You have to realize that Apple market is much different than than of Dell's or VA's. The surprise factor is a significant catalyst. Do you think the iMac would have still would have received front page headlines if details and/or screenshots of it had leaked out three weeks prior to it's introduction? What about the announcement of the Microsoft investment?
Additionally, as several other people have pointed out, there's the "wait and see" problem. If user a is about to buy a powerbook, but sees that new models are coming out in three months, he may wait. Of course, the new models may actually come out in six months. The rumor sites don't really know. But in the meantime, Apple has lost sales.
It's not like most of the rumor sites are "information for the people" champions. Many of them are for-profit businesses.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
I'm not condoning Apple's actions over this, they've been heavy-handed and way too zealous in what basically amounts to a "getting your own back" campaign against sites whose job is to report this kind of stuff.
But still, you can see where they're coming from in wanting to keep information to themselves. There have been several cases in computing history where plans have changed, and a vast circulation of rumours means that the company can end up looking bad for not having done something they'd never wanted to announce.
And when you get rumours flying around, as the net is so good for doing, it becomes next to impossible to separate the true ones from the false ones, and again this can make the company look bad, especially if the rumours are malicious. These rumours are a great way of influencing things like stock prices, and the net has already shown us that a mere rumour spread online can cause stocks to plummit or climb. What company is really going to want to the at the whim of that?
But still, Apple really needs to stop being so vindictive about this. All they're doing is making themselves look like tyrants, a problem they've had in the past. If they relaxed a little, I'm sure things wouldn't be so bad - every time Apple blows up, it draws attention to the rumours...
Bad Karma, and a big mistake. The rumors sites are some of Apple's best advertising.
I am not the Apple fan that I once was, but a few years ago, when everyone was still saying "Won't be long now before Apple dies," I was hearing other tunes from.... the rumors sites. They're some of the biggest supporters. They print the good news that everyone wants to beleive. They provide hints of things to come, soon, enticing fans to imagine and beleive in and most of all _eagerly anticipate_ them. Pop stars and politicians could take publicity lessons from the Apple Rumor Press.
And the rest of the people, who Steve Jobs wants to "Wow" and "Surprise"? The untamed masses who are just getting a computer? They don't read the sites, Steve. Your secrets are safe. The fans visit the rumor mills; most people don't. The fans will check your cool stuff anyway. The average consumer will be intruiged with your suprises. It's OK. Leave the rumor sites alone. Heck, use them like politicians use the press... leak info selectively. But don't sue them. Good grief.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.