How Apple Orchestrates Controlled Leaks, and Why

Lanxon writes "'I was a Senior Marketing Manager at Apple and I was instructed to do some controlled leaks,' confesses John Martellaro. 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. 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!'"

Comments

duh?

[falcon5768]

Thats how they all do it. Hell its even how the government does it. This isnt news, its well known common practice. Thats why its always fun when Apple goes after someone about a leak. Because in those situations, you KNOW Apple didnt authorize the leak and it makes you snicker.

Re:duh?

[bondsbw]

"OMG Apple does what everyone else does..."

Not really. Most companies freely brag about their unreleased products in order to gain hype. Apple has everybody else brag about their products to gain hype. That keeps them legit and makes it hard to accuse them of announcing vaporware.

Re:duh?

[elrous0]

With all these flamebait mods, I can't help but picture a legion of hipster-wannabe Mac fanboys with mod points glaring at their MacBook screens, caressing their iPhones like rosaries, all mumbling "How DARE they insult Father Steve!!!" in unison in every juice bar in America.

Another Apple Trick

[eldavojohn]

Say Jobs wants to fire someone but he doesn't want to lose them to another company. So he calls up the manager or whoever and asks him to do a 'controlled leak' for him via cellphone at Devil's Slough near Cupertino and wants to meet him there at 3am but come alone and no e-mails, no mention of this to anyone, no sort of traceability just to cover our asses because, hey, this is a controlled leak, right? But he asks the guy to stop at a random pub and buy Steve a bottle of their finest alcohol.

So the guy shows up and there's Steve walking along the railroad tracks above Devil's Slough. Well, when the guy approaches him, Steve hands him a cell phone and takes the bottle of liquor. Depending on how much Steve likes the bottle of liquor is how Steve proceeds next. If he likes it, he lets the man realize the cellphone is just an iPhone shell and Steve embraces him as Steve injects him with pentobarbital and gently lets him fall to his death in the slough. Now if Steve doesn't like the bottle, he pulls out his chic white iDesert Eagle and puts one in the back of each of the guy's legs gangland style. Then he usually taunts and complains about the bottle the guy brought him before roundhousing him to the head off the railroad tracks. He usually finishes it with a really bad hollywood-esque pun (ex. "consider your employment terminated!") and holds the gun sideways to look badass. Either way the guy just becomes a faceless statistic of people who drank too much at a bar and were mugged on their way home. And since it was a 'controlled leak' no one knows about it.

It's all true. Reiser tried but failed to open source the model. And that time Jobs looked cancer thin? He had actually just gotten back from a two week stint in Devil's Slough after a botched termination turned into a Most Dangerous Game where the hunter became the hunted.

More like applie

[Tobor the Eighth Man]

It's worth noting that if Apple were a smaller company, this sort of behavior would (or should, you can always find more shills) get doors slammed in its face at media outlets pretty fast. There's two reasons why it doesn't: 1. They're probably well-connected enough that they could always find someone else to leak their supposed "info," either through naievete or just apathy, and 2. They're so big that exclusive Apple news is a big plus, even if it turns out to be false or misleading.

Stocks?

[retech]

I'd love to see some data about company insiders and their stock purchasing/selling in relation to the "leaks". There are a few people making a shitload of $$$ off of the leaks. And if they are not then I'd be shocked. The last WSJ "leak" shot appl stock way up and my first thought was: someone is having a nice Christmas bonus.

I will need some help with this.

[starbugs]

All we need to do is create a leak for a fictional (but desirable) product. Slowly release blurry mock-ups and specs. Start a few rumors here and there. Then (as long as everyone stays positive) we let Apple deal with the actual implementation.

I'm awaiting my DRM-free ireader. (Apple, you can do it so much better)

Re:I will need some help with this.

[nine-times]

I think you're on to something, but the reasons are a little more complicated than, "they want to release gadgets in generations".

First is the fact that their development method is just different from a lot of other companies. Most companies take an idea an idea like a portable MP3 player and say, "Lets put every feature we can into this thing for launch. I want it to have a radio, and have it play lots of games, and maybe have a built-in toaster oven!" So they make a list of features and put them all into a prototype. They polish the prototype until it kind of works, and then release that design as a product. In its first version, it only kind of works, but has lots of problems from having a lot of not-quite-ready features crammed in. They try to fix these problems in the next version.

In contrast, if Apple sets out to design an mp3 player, then there's a decent chance that the product will only have 1 major feature: playing mp3s. Instead of making the first version have loads of features, they'll spend their development time making sure that using the product as an mp3 player is easy, intuitive, and works very well. They'll add features over the next few versions, but they'll do so relatively slowly because each time, they're making sure the new features are integrated well into the existing design.

Those are two different design philosophies which bring different results. In the first way of doing things, you start with a more feature-rich product, but in the second way you start with a more polished product.

Beyond that, there's something else going on in Apple's marketing that is pretty obvious once you notice it, but a lot of people don't notice it. Most tech manufacturers are constantly trying to introduce new products and drive down the price. When Apple introduces a new product, they tend to keep the price stable for a very long time. Watch iPod prices or Macbook prices, and you'll notice that the price very rarely goes down. As new technology comes out, Apple keeps upgrading the product to be smaller, lighter, or more feature rich in order to justify the current price, but they don't really drop the price.

It's worth understanding that the price points are often chosen by marketing, and then a product is designed to fit that price. I believe the first iPod was $400, and right now that's also the price of the most expensive iPod. There's a reason for this. It's not that Apple couldn't create a really snazzy $700 iPod, but that if they did, Jobs would probably say, "Let's put that on ice until we can make it cheaper." Ultimately, they don't want to release a $700 iPod and then two years later sell the same iPod for $400. Along with everything else, that creates the impression of a product whose value is dropping. They'd much rather sell a crappy $400 iPod this year and then two years later sell you the super-snazzy iPod for $400, so that you have the impression of a product which preserves its value by continually improving.