Antennagate
I don’t even use an iPhone. As I’ve stated previously, I was on AT&T Wireless, the connections were so poor I switched to Verizon and have been happy ever since.
But this story fascinates me from a public relations viewpoint.
Apple doesn’t respond. You can call Jobs a megalomaniac, you can say Macs are overpriced and the company remains mum. Except for Jobs himself, who notoriously responds to an occasional e-mail. I have my own theory about this, I believe in addition to wanting to gain customer feedback, take the pulse of his constituency, he loves the human contact. After all, we’re all animals at the core, and one can be surrounded by sycophants for only so long. Without input from Joe Average, you lose touch. Which is one of the reasons why the first album by an act is so much better than the fourth. Then there’s someone like Joni Mitchell, who went to Greece and was inspired to create "Blue" and drove cross-country and created her other masterpiece, "Hejira". You don’t want to lose touch. But once word is out, that you’re traveling amongst the unwashed, the haters pile on. Ever notice it? A star gives one autograph, and then the hordes descend upon him. Worse is the need to tear down everybody above you, as Dylan so eloquently put it:
While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in
That’s where Jobs is now. Knowing that he reads and responds, haters bait him. And part of this baiting and posting revved up Antennagate.
But really, Antennagate was fueled by the news media. Both old and new school, online and print. And Apple tolerated it all until truly old media, "Consumer Reports", entered the picture.
Let’s be clear, Apple made an initial announcement, that there really was no problem, that it was all a software issue. If only the company had stated that how you grip a phone is responsible for signal strength back then (then again, in e-mail, Jobs did say just to grip the phone in a different way). Point being, you’ve got to be truthful from the inception, and one can argue Apple broke this rule, they obfuscated. This hurts the company’s image. To what degree and for how long? Time will tell.
But once "Consumer Reports" stated it could not recommend the iPhone 4, despite the handset getting its best rating, old media piled on. After all, when CR trashed the Lexus GX 460, Toyota immediately did a mea culpa, took the car off the market, fixed it. Because you don’t argue with "Consumer Reports". Hell, Suzuki did and it almost put the company out of business in the U.S.
So not only are blogs piling on, but the "Wall Street Journal" and the "New York Times" too…they’re baiting the company like bloggers bait Jobs in e-mail…WATCHA GONNA DO! Apple’s finally fucked up. Didn’t that Microsoft employee call the iPhone 4 Apple’s Vista?
And one thing we know about Jobs is he has a high opinion of himself. He can’t apologize. And can you really recall three million phones? And does the company have a fix anyway?
Word immediately leaked out from the press conference, Apple would provide a free bumper, even give a refund for those who already bought one. Good will, but doesn’t speak to the problem. I bought a defective unit and you don’t care about me!
So, either you’ve got to stonewall, like Live Nation, saying there’s no problem, or immediately roll over like Lexus, with the GX 460.
Jobs did neither. He presented facts.
Watch the presentation. It’s mindblowing. You may still hate Jobs, but by time he’s through he’s convinced you there’s nothing truly wrong with the iPhone 4, it’s the equal, if not superior to its competitors, and Apple truly cares about its customers.
This is like the health care debate. No matter which side you were on, pro or con, we can all agree that after Scott Brown got elected, the mainstream media said health care reform was finished. But it passed.
You can analogize this to Reagan breaking the unions, most specifically, that of the air traffic controllers. You’ve got to back down, don’t mess with the unions! But Reagan did, and union power hasn’t been the same since, irrelevant of your opinion of this.
In this case, Steve Jobs forged a new public relations path. Addressing the conflagration while minimizing it, not getting his dander up, like Michael Rapino and Jason Garner at yesterday’s Live Nation presentation, Steve said I’m your friend and let me show you the facts.
It’s hard to argue with the facts.
Where were the facts in the Live Nation presentation? The ones we truly wanted. Exactly how many shows were canceled? How many tickets were sold at a discount or even given away? Release all this data, show where the Ticketmaster fees go and…the public would be silenced.
Live Nation’s got to make a profit. Show that the profit is in the fees and suddenly, it’s the act’s problem. And then the act has to back down. And there’s progress.
But Live Nation believes it must protect the acts and the agents at all costs. Certainly Ticketmaster believes this. So both are whipping boys. Hell, Live Nation could admit its mistakes. It did say it overpaid for shows, but the mea culpa was limited.
In the new world, the connected Internet world, rage can build overnight. But you’ve got the ability to respond instantly, from your own platform. Hell, the below video was hosted by Apple itself. Will everybody watch it? No. But fanboys will, and continue to use their iPhone 4’s, and the mania will continue, the positive mania, that is driving Apple’s sales and stock…we all want to play with a winner, and somehow Steve Jobs and Apple are still such, even though yesterday it appeared they were on the ropes.
Confront adversity head on. Don’t lose your cool, don’t get defensive, when those in power do so they become objects of ridicule. We live in an era of transparency, air your dirty laundry yourself and everybody else calms down. What, yesterday Live Nation said reporters were keeping bands from hitting the road in the fall? By writing about summer tour disasters? You get to create your own perception, via facts. If Jason Garner and Michael Rapino want bands to go on the road, they’ve got to convince them with facts, not innuendo.
Then again, you’ve got to have a good product to begin with.
But if you do your best, create something great, and are truly transparent, the public will be on your side, not that of the haters.
It’s a new world. Pundits mean less than ever before. You control your own destiny.
