By Leyland Cecco, Opinions Contributor
A couple of weeks ago at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the most innovative, expensive and useless devices were unveiled for tech-eager buyers. While 3-D televisions made headlines, the idea of the tablet computer was at the centre of everyone’s minds. Lenovo and Hewlett Packard released touch screen ‘slates’ to usher in a new era of personal computing.
But as many blogs and newspapers noticed, the most popular and talked about product was one that doesn’t actually exist. The CES was littered with reports about the mysterious Apple Tablet, a product whose existence is of debatable veracity. The media, fulfilling their roles as advertising proxies, were back at work predicting what the tablet might look like. Fed by analysts from Piper Jaffray, Oppenheimer and the Yankee Group, media outlets played their dutiful roles as rumour reporters.
It will have a seven-inch screen. No wait – 10.1 inches! It’s for e-books, of course! Of course not – movies and television! It will cost $500. Ha! $1000. $750!
Here, a problem arises. It’s understandable that the public will consume gossip about a product that these tech-reporters predict will change the way consumers will use computers and entertainment devices.
But that’s Apple’s job. It’s the company’s obligation to push its product to consumers – to hawk its wares to a base of students with disposable incomes. However, thanks to a brilliant marketing strategy that costs nothing, Apple remains tight-lipped on the actual existence of the product.
Apple has a long history of being clandestine in their product development. It adds an air of mystique to a company that changed the way we consume music, how we watch movies and how cell phones are used. Apple didn’t confirm the existence of the iPhone until they announced it at a press conference. David Yoffie, of the Harvard Business School, estimated that Apple received more than US$400 million in free advertising from the release of the iPhone. It came from countless praise pieces in reputable newspapers (such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal), as well as in online publications (such as Gizmodo and Wired).
Advertising is a key part of any business, and large companies will shell out millions of dollars for omnipresent advertising. It seems that Apple not only realizes this, but also has decided that paying less than they should works better. BNET.com published a report that showed Apple’s 2008 advertising budget as US$467 million. So in 2008, Apple paid almost half a billion dollars for ad space, and received the equivalent of more than US$867 million dollars. Sounds like a pretty good deal.
The most unfortunate part of this great deal is that Apple uses the media, a media that purports to be bias and interest free, as a trumpet of product praise. By forcing publications to worry that they might be missing out on a vital story if they don’t cover a rumoured device, Apple subtly coerces media behemoths to wage a rumour war, each seeking to out report the other about a nonexistent tablet. While these battles are fought, while tales are spun, Apple sits on the sidelines and watches with a widening grin as interest in its fabled product becomes rampant.
Newspapers would be heavily criticized if they published rumours and hearsay; they would be discredited as tabloid publications if their sources were an insider who has a friend who knows this guy who used to work at Apple. Until this point, however, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Globe and Mail and (sadly) many more news giants have been giving free advertising to a product that you can’t buy, that hasn’t been announced, and that might possiblybe only in the minds of desperate consumers.
So stop it. Get back to covering real news: Tiger Woods.
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