The Flack

This weblog attempts to shine a brighter light on the subtle role public relations plays in politics, culture, media, business and sports. Through greater transparency, the author hopes to make the profession better understood and perhaps more widely appreciated.

Example

…is the word Fortune magazine (and former NY Times) gadget guru Peter Lewis uses to describe the much-hyped birthchild of Apple & Motorola with Cingular as its midwife. I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago, and even vlogged about it on this blog.

With all the hype surrounding the boffo news conference to introduce this new cell phone that also plays 100 iTunes, little can be done to sway the jaded critical press if the product doesn’t deliver. In fact, too much advance hyperbole can have a deleterious impact on the tenor of a product’s critical reviews.

Marketers might be better served with the element of surprise, as was the case with the Nano, an elegant wafer-like surprise bi-product of the same over-hyped news conference. As in our business, there’s much to be said about under promising and over delivering.

Posted in Institutions & Enterprises, Apple, Motorola | No Comments »

Apple Tunes Out

Posted by Peter Himler on 30th August 2005

Example

In both The Times (via Reuters) and Journal today, we learn of Apple’s planned alliance with Motorola and Cingular to introduce a mobile phone equipped with i-Tunes — an i-Pod phone, if you will. I was curious to see a news conference flagged for Sept. 7 in San Francisco to make the announcement. WSJ SF tech scribe Nick Wingfield reported that “people familiar with the matter” spilled the beans.

Was this an intentional leak? Perhaps one of the gizmodo’s of the world got wind of the news forcing the new triumverat’s hand? Did yesterday’s negative news that Apple has settled the class action suit over the i-Pod’s less-than-advertised battery life have something to do with the release of the deal? No one from the three companies was talking.

Posted in Apple, Motorola | No Comments »