Nobody knows how to play with the media more than Apple does, even when a bad news can damage their profits Apple turns it into good news and generate more positive buzz than bad.

Take for example the recently launched iPhone 3G, with bigger demand than devices to supply the impressive costumers reception for the new smartphone, but was it badly planned by Apple or a maneuver to generate buzz?

I believe it is a PR and Marketing Stunt, let me show you my reasons:

1. All the major iPhone resellers were acepting preorder for the new iPhone and some of them were reporting complete sold out days before the launch. With this information on hand, Apple could supply more iPhone to those resellers that were selling the device in a faster pace, but not.

2. O2 reported that was receiving 13,000 orders per second. O2 reported that they were receiving 13,000 pre orders of the new iPhone 3G days before the launch and with this information on hand Apple let the shortage take control of the media.

3. Reports that Apple was hiring people to stay in line to make the launch crowded. This is just a rumor and nobody has come forward to tell if it was or wasn’t true.

4. There is not buzz If Apple just delivers the iPhone as normal. People buys, Apple sells, thiere is nothing to write about it, instead of if thousands of angry fans were left in the cold lines waiting for their iPhones, could generate more positive news, because it says that the demand is higher than anticipated, even if Apple just has a few thousand iPhone to sell, nobody will really know how many were available, just Apple.

5. 450k or 1M, it depends on who you ask
The next monday after the iPhone launch Apple reported an impressive and massive sale of 1 million iPhones, but analysts are refuting Apple because Apple is counting delivered iPhone as sold and those iPhone must be bought by the costumer to be considered sold. Some analysts estimate the weekend sale as 450k, Apple claims 1 millions. Do the math. iPhone 3G were only sold with activation, so if you buy one you have to activate it where you buy it.

6. Bad publicity could mean good publicity. In the clearer evidence that bad publicity always generates more good publicity than we really could understand, here is the search results of some phrases associated with the iPhone 3G launch:

If you search on Google for:
1. iPhone 3g excellent product, you will receive 253,000 responses
2. Apple 1 million iphone 3g sold, you will receive 1,140,000 responses
3. iPhone 3g faster network, you will receive 429,000 responses
4. iPhone 3G shortage, you will receive 622,000 responses
5. iPhone 3g sold out, you will receive 745,000 responses
6. iPhone 3G problems, you will receive 45,400,000 responses
7. iPhone 3g problems, you will receive 250,000,000 responses

Now if you sum the first 4 searches that said good things about the product you won’t get nothing near the the 6 search, Apple knows it and these numbers demonstrate that a Controlled Damage can help generate a lot of buzz worldwide.

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