By Cameron Craig
I first started working for Apple on the public-relations agency side at Porter Novelli in Sydney in 1997. Steve Jobs had just returned to the company and the product line was in shambles. The outlook for Apple was bleak.
Little did I know that over the next 10 years Apple would dazzle the world with its groundbreaking innovations, masterful marketing and against-the-grain approach. Public relations played an important role in that success. Here are six lessons from those days:
• Keep it simple. If you ran an Apple news release from the time through a readability test it would most likely have scored at a level easily understood by the average fourth-grader. Any hint of cliché or technical jargon was edited out. Jobs personally approved every news release.
Run your own communications through a readability test, which are available free on sites, like Word Count Tools and Readability Score. The easier your communications are to understand, the broader your reach.
• Value reporters’ time. We reserved news releases and events for only the most important products or company milestones. Reporters knew that when we contacted them we had something important to say.
• Be hands on. Before we would grant interviews to top executives or send out products for review, we made sure that every reporter, influencer or analyst had a hands-on product briefing.
• Stay focused. Define your key messages and stick to them. Don’t dilute your social-media accounts with off-subject messaging. Offer your help to journalists and industry analysts who cover your field—even if there’s not always a direct benefit to you.
• Prioritize media influencers. We didn’t work with long media lists. Instead, we concentrated on a relatively small number of reporters who set the tone for others to follow. We’d offer these reporters such things as exclusive interviews or the first shot at reviewing new products.
• Respect your brand. That’s the most important lesson of all that I learned at Apple. Your brand is your biggest asset and you have to protect it.
Cameron Craig has worked with Apple, Visa, PayPal, Polycom and Yahoo.
1 comment
Read my “one more thing” sequel https://bit.ly/2b25Q1c