Threats and opportunities for public relations in online communities

Résumé du document

"Apple Reinvents the Phone? - Apple published on its website on January 9th 2007, when Steve Jobs, the company's CEO, was presenting his brand new product to the world, at the MacWorld conference in San Francisco, USA. The event resulted in massive media coverage and newspapers described the brand as a revolution. The analysis of the media launch of one of the most awaited products of 2007 presents three major interests: the firm needed to communicate with the general public -potential customers of its products-, but also to "sell? the concept of iPhone to mobile telephone carriers all over the world and therefore increase its power on current and future negotiations. A third economic objective was to incite potential investors to increase their stock value. Kepplinger (1997) stated that journalists present their own interpretation of events, and therefore an event becomes newsworthy as long as the journalists think it is. Over the years, and with the multiplication of media channels, it has become relatively easy for public relations to have specific information published in the news.

Extraits

[...] And not a moment too soon, judging by today's report from Computing Which showing that one in two adults feel overwhelmed by new technology, including many familiar with it at work. Nothing as multifunctional as an iPhone will be entirely simple, but at least the iPhone should be as easy to use as Apple's iconic family of iPod music players. It was because the iPod's future growth was being threatened by new smart phones able to play up to 5,000 tracks that Apple had to act to make the iPod take over the phone before someone else's phone swallowed the iPod. [...]

[...] The generally ground breaking public relations strategies employed by Apple are frequently used as illustrations in the literature (Muñiz and O'Guinn, 2001; Muñiz and Schau, 2005), two good reasons to search a research on its communication methods. The hypothesis of this research was that two important information released at the same time (the new product and the company's new name) could not provide a totally efficient media coverage. Indeed, instead of communicating about either the product or the new name, many media covered both news at the same time (some of them also mentioning the stock option case), which weakened its messages. [...]

[...] iPhone syncs content from a user's iTunes library on their PC or Mac, and can play any music or video content they have purchased from the online iTunes store. iPhone is a Breakthrough Internet Communications Device iPhone features a rich HTML email client which fetches your email in the background from most POP3 or IMAP mail services and displays photos and graphics right along with the text. iPhone is fully multi-tasking, so you can be reading a web page while downloading your email in the background. [...]

[...] Last month, Apple said an internal investigation found no misconduct by current management and said it has "complete confidence" in Jobs. Appendix 5 USA Today (USA) - B Apple packs all kinds of high-tech goodies into iPhone By Edward C. Baig. Published on 10/01/2007. Retrieved on 23/10/2007 from http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2007-01-09-iphone-goodies_x.htm LAS VEGAS With its long-anticipated iPhone, Apple is hoping to do to the wireless industry what it has already done to the music business: Rock it. The iPhone is certainly a looker: super thin, touch-screen, closer in appearance to a Nano than a Treo. [...]

[...] (2001) Applying and measuring strategic evaluation to the case of Microsoft. Corporate Communications: An International Journal. Volume Number pp. 157-163. Lippman, W. (1922). Public Opinion, Harcourt Brace, New York, NY Mazzola, P., Ravasi, D., and Gabbioneta, C. (2006) How to Build Reputation in Financial Markets. Long Range Planning. Volume 39, Issue pp. 385-407. [...]