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Apple has taken a beating from critics on the way it handled this week’s announcement that Steve Jobs would temporarily step down from the company.
Dow Jones reports:
Yet Apple’s handling of the situation so far hasn’t won many admirers. Some Apple watchers are already raising questions about what’s really behind the jarring swing in sentiment about the nature of Jobs’ treatment in such a short period of time. Last week, Jobs, who is a pancreatic Read more »
Steve Jobs is taking a leave of absence from Apple until June, citing health reasons. According to media , Jobs sent a letter to Apple employees today saying his health issues are “more complex than I originally thought.” In the letter, Jobs also points out that speculation about his health has increasingly become a media distraction.
In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.
Steve Dowling, director of corporate PR at Apple, did not immediately return calls on the impact this will have on Apple’s PR strategy.
A study released last week found that people want more evidence about consumer electronics’ green claims. At the same time, many are misinformed about which companies have adopted green practices. The survey, which was conducted by Strategic Oxygen and Cohn & Wolfe earlier this fall, finds there’s a large “perception vs. reality” gap in the green space. For instance, the brands most associated with green practices — like Dell, HP, Apple, and Microsoft — actually don’t meet the green practice standards defined by GreenPeace, according to the survey. But brands like Samsung and Nokia aren’t given enough credit for their green contributions, it adds.
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Unsurprisingly, the tumult in the financial markets caused a dramatic spike - 472% year-over-year - in financial industry news, according to Cision’s Q3 Corporate Media Reputation Index. The Index does a quarterly assessment of how news coverage reflects the corporate reputation of the 100 largest US companies. The release for the Q3 index says “financial company news comprised 46% of the Index, up 32 percentage points from the same quarter last year. No industry has ever dominated the Cision Index to this extent.”
Nevertheless, tech took the top spots, with Microsoft and Apple coming in at numbers one and two respectively. The top five are: Microsoft, Apple, Intel, Bank of America, and Walmart. BofA climbed a whopping 72 spots to take number four. Other financial companies making a leap include Goldman Sachs (up 30 spots to 17) and Wells Fargo (climbing 51 spots to number 26).
Valleywag broke news that Microsoft is entering “phase two” of its ad campaign withhout Jerry Seinfeld. Even though Microsoft reportedly still has an unaired Seinfeld ad, it is shifting its strategy to directly take on Apple’s Apple vs. PC ads (see new ads here). But tech columnist
I don’t blame Microsoft for trying to battle Apple ads and I even commend it for doing just that. But now is not the right time to do it: Microsoft didn’t improve its image yet. And if it hasn’t been able to do that, how can it possibly expect to compete with the single company in this industry that has the best image of all?
According to Valleywag, Frank Shaw (WagEd’s lead on the Microsoft account) said “there is the ‘potential to do other things’ with Seinfeld…He adds: ‘People would have been happier if everyone loved the ads, but this was not unexpected.’”
Readers, do you think it was a good PR move for Microsoft to switch its ad strategy?
In his column last week, Keith O’Brien questioned the strategy behind Microsoft’s $300 million campaign with Crispin Porter & Bogusky to make the company cool like Apple. This week I talked to a source close to Microsoft who says the campaign is not about making Microsoft cool, but is about finding new ways to engage with consumers. That’s definitely marketing speak some kind of rebranding, but my source declined to say more. But we can expect a significant PR component in this campaign and Waggener Edstrom will be involved in that effort, the source added.
Video rental - both mail and online
Wal-Mart it is shuttering its online movie download service.
Blockbuster has raised prices for its Total Access service.
News Corp and Apple have entered into a deal to offer Fox movie rentals online.
What markets are you watching in 2008?
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