Don’t you just love surprises! Tell me you don’t love it when something happens that doesn’t just surprise you, but jolts you and hit’s your sweet spot. Apple recognized this inherent human tendency of loving surprises and has made it an integral part of its product promotion model. Apple arguably is one of the most secretive tech companies in the world and literally adheres to a code of silence as far as its product development and promotion is concerned.

Experts believe that it’s Apple’s secretiveness that in large part, has contributed towards its fantastic success.

Restricted Information Flow Creates Hype

Most companies in the world can take a tip or two from Apple for creating the perfect buzz around a product before its launch. The company creates hype by making available very limited information to its target customers. It at all, they are provided with a few glimpses of the products; it can be a word about a new feature or a technical specification – just enough to get the customers to start thinking. Mostly, the company has a habit of providing details right before the product launch. Look how Apple marketed the iPhone. By the time, the product actually arrived on the market; its success was a foregone conclusion.

“Everything’s perfect”

No device is perfect. It has its bugs and requires fixes periodically. But, there is a section of die hard Apple users who think Apple’s operating systems are perfection personified. The fact that Apple is not upfront about the threats that users might face, permeates a feeling of confidence in Apple products and users begin to believe in the maxim ‘no news is good news’. Now compare this state of affairs to the way Apple’s rivals go about handling their fixes. Take for example the case of Microsoft. Its fixes and patches are big news.  The ‘almost hidden’ and barely discussed Apple fixes, on the other hand, actually give rise to an erroneous belief that there are absolutely no fixes required. This is yet another reason for its popularity.

Lessening chances of backfire

The fact that Apple doesn’t make early announcements of its future plans means it’s actually keeping all bases covered. It reduces chances of going back to the drawing board if any of the features that it announces are not really up-to-the mark. It also reduces chances of any embarrassment that might result from the company being unable to integrate some of the announced features in the final product.  Apple only makes an announcement when its product is about the hit the market. So, users are unaware of its list of features, technical specifications etc, and only know about them when the product is up for grabs.

By following a strictly enforced culture of providing very little information, and that too infrequently, has benefited Apple in more ways than one. It provides the company with the element of surprise and also given it the ability to creating a surge of expectation at the right time – that is, when the products are available on the market.  Such an approach is difficult to replicate and many Apple wannabes have faltered at the doorstep. It requires a combination of marketing sangfroid, an unshakeable confidence in your own products and a perfect understanding of a target customer’s mindset and expectations to leverage secrecy for popularity – Apple has all this abundance.