Valleywag
An article in Ad Age purports to expose something that every Valley reporter has long known, but never come out and said: Apple's PR department is the biggest group of slackers to grace the tech world. What, exactly, do they do all day long? It's a mystery. For the uninitiated reporter looking to get a quote, the list of Apple PR contacts, complete with direct-dial numbers, seems heaven-sent. But don't get too excited. Every call goes straight to voicemail, like the entire PR department paid its credit card bill late and is now ducking the collection agency. If you leave a voicemail, reporters say, it more often than not disappears into the ether, never to be returned.
As Ad Age points out: "if you Google 'Apple did not return calls,' you'll come up with 2.35 million hits." That claim is more than a bit sloppy. The exact phrase "Apple did not return calls" returns 3,100 hits. But still, Apple makes the rest of the Valley look like pikers when it comes to withering silence. "Google did not return calls" calls up 978 hits, while "Yahoo did not return calls" comes in at a mere 82 results.
Even if you're able to get through, Apple's PR department is notoriously difficult to work with. As one Silicon Valley reporter told me "If they designed the iPod, every time you went to play a song, the thing would call your parents to ask why your taste in music is terrible, and then, a week later, let you listen to 5 seconds of the song."
So, if you need to get a quote for your story, what should you do? If you're a newbie, you're screwed. Save yourself time, and as you leave your fruitless, pro forma voicemail, create a macro to autotype "Apple did not return calls." Been at this beat for a while? Bypass the PR department altogether, and just IM Steve Jobs himself.
Comments
i disagree! apple pr people often return calls. they call after deadline, then read a prepared statement devoid of information. if you're really luck they'll go off the record with you, then tell you... nothing.
They work harder than Howard J. "no comment" Rubenstein. Which is why he's paid a hell of a lot more.
Who needs Apple flak? Make your own statement: just write out a normal sentence, and once you're done, insert statements like "innovative," "revolutionary," "really-white-and-shiny," and "expensive" every second word or so. Then pick a random day to announce your new wonder at the Moscone Center, and you're set!
and one more thing...
Who in the Valley needs PR when there is the venerable corpspeak?
Heh, I've always wanted to write a post on Apple PR! Too insider, even for me, though. I find Apple PR to be easy to work with, to be honest. (Even when I was an intern at Wired.) What they don't have time for is a lot of trade pub commentary. They like their mainstream publications just fine, though. And they build up their relationships with reporters over years. Try that with an external Pr firm that churns new juniors every 12 months.
From a PR operatives perspective, I'd love the opportunity to goof off and surf the interweb as much as the next person if there was an in-house press room was the slackers paradise that the article makes Apple out.
However, I wouldn't want to take an in-house job at Apple (unless there is a radical marketing / comms team culture makeover).
I love the company's products (even the lame ones like the MacBook Air, its .mac web hosting and the Cube) but the allegations I have heard from friends who worked both agency-side and in-house for them would make the process not worthwhile.
No flexibility, no creativity within your role and the famous 'Steve says' commandments that middling management uses to beat down staff, when in all probability Steve hadn't expressed an opinion at all. Hmmm, yes please sign me up for a role right away..... not.
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