Steve Jobs didn’t need PR, but it didn’t hurt

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Our generation has seen few like him.  Steve Jobs has become inseparable from the many things that give us entertainment, joy and connectivity in our lives. And beyond tools of enjoyment and creativity, Apple products have become a fashion statement.  The iconic apple with a bite out of it on your cell phone or laptop said a lot about you as a hip, progressive, creative person who desires functionality balanced with good design.  (While others bought Apple products just because we heard they were easy to use.)

Few individuals have accomplished so much with what the cynic in us would classify as simply consumer products — a gross understatement for sure.  If the iPod or Apple TV were just consumer products and not the revolutionary, behavior-changing instruments they are, Steve Jobs would’ve needed PR, and a lot of it.

Beyond being a visionary and designer, Jobs was a marketer. He was his own publicist.  He didn’t need to be, but he was, and that made all the difference. One of Jobs’ beliefs that stand out for me, flying in the face of any Marketing 101 class, was that to create the future you can’t do it through focus groups. Customers don’t know they want something they haven’t seen. Public opinion stifled creativity according to Jobs, who was more focused on bringing us the future while his competitors did their market research.

With the bar set this high, and with every product innovation raising it higher, who needs PR? Jobs used it, and it made Apple even better. It helped him raise the hype before a product launch making the blogosphere a-buzz in anticipation; it filled news conferences to over-capacity when only product enhancements were announced — hardly newsworthy for other companies — but turning them into huge theatrical events nonetheless.  Its PR efforts elevated Apple to almost a religious status, creating a culture of cool, hip and confident among its droves of loyal customers.  In fact he himself concluded that PR was more important to him than advertising: “Ad campaigns are necessary for competition,” he said. “IBM’s ads are everywhere. But good PR educates people. That’s all it is. You can’t con people in this business. The products speak for themselves.”

So did the products speak for themselves? Absolutely. Did he need PR to sell them? No, but it sure helped.

 

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