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jchw a day ago

You're suggesting there is no chance that Apple is engaging in guerilla marketing, which you discredit by referring to as a "psyop" when it is in fact a well-documented and pretty mundane practice, because they sell a lot of iPhones?

I mean, it's pretty much just blind conjecture that they may be marketing in stealth in the first place, so really who knows on that front. But you gotta be smoking something to think Apple doesn't want their low margin products to sell like hot cakes. I mean sure, they'd love even more for their high margin products to sell like hot cakes (like the Mac Minis that are useful for AI like in this story), but the low margin ones literally make up for it in volume so you'd sure hope they sell well.

They are a trillion dollar company, that wasn't by accident. They are marketing and sales monsters. Arguably of the big companies, they are the ones that have mastered consumer perception the best of any company on Earth. They would like all of their products to like crazy always.

bensyverson 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You're right, Apple has a long history with guerrilla marketing, especially gray-area tactics like bots and paid commenters. Even though there is no evidence of this, it "feels" true, so it must be true, right? Why wouldn't they do it, after all? They don't really care that much about protecting the brand, and these types of tactics have zero chance of blowing up in their face.

Even though they can and do pay for the highest-profile placements, they also do shady guerrilla marketing "just in case," because they have a whole lab that just analyzes channel efficiency, and they've discovered that anonymous comments on Reddit in random channels have 8.7x the effectiveness of YouTube ads, especially among the coveted Pale Incel demo.

This is how they got to be a trillion dollar company after all! It was marketing, not product.

andrewl 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Paul Graham discusses this in his essay The Submarine: https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

As you say, Apple would not be a trillion dollar company without a great product, but you can build something great and also aggressively market it. Nobody is saying they got where they are just with marketing.

jchw 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why do you care so much that this is a totally realistic argument? You don't personally have to like it, it's not about how it makes you feel as a fan of Apple.

commandersaki 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Because it is ludicrous and the tin foilers should be called out.

jchw 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It absolutely isn't. It is only ludicrous if you hold Apple to some weird standard of ethics that they absolutely do not deserve. If you think this practice isn't common, that's purely a matter of ignorance on your part.

bensyverson 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes, basically. [0]

[0]: Obligatory https://xkcd.com/386/

reliabilityguy 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> when it is in fact a well-documented and pretty mundane practice

Practiced by Apple? Just because someone is doing it doesn’t mean that every company does it.

jchw 16 hours ago | parent [-]

Or an agency on their behalf, but either way, there's really no way for us to really know, due to the stealthy nature of this sort of advertising.