Are people not talking about your company’s new innovative unannounced product enough? Well, there is an easy marketing fix for that! Have an “anonymous employee” tell someone from the press something extremely top secret and newsworthy about your product. Although no company will ever admit to this, sometimes it is the only logical explanation of how such “secretive” products end up being fully revealed to the public before the official launch. Of course this does not mean that every leak is intentional, in fact, many leaks probably are not but that does not eliminate them all. However, this can be a very tricky strategy as so much can go wrong so easily. If used correctly leaks can be an extremely effective marketing tool.

How does Apple make sure that users don’t go buy the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 which launches a month before their brand new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus? Very simple actually, one of their employees “leaks” some slightly important information about their new phone around the same time that Samsung announces their new phone. Now instead of everyone talking about the new cool phone Samsung just launched, they have taken part of that audience away and made them talk about something the new Apple phone might have.

Although this can be a smart strategy if used correctly, it can also backfire. For one, that wow factor when the phone is revealed is no longer there. The unveiling events used to be a very big deal for not only phones but technology in general but when almost all details about the new tech are already known before the launch, is it really that big of a deal? Apple revealed the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus on September 16, 2016. At the time the stock price was $115.12, up from $102.65 a few days prior. Rather than jumping even more after the announcement, the price had dropped to $111.64 within 10 days. When you compare this to the launch of the iPhone 5 in 2012, within a week of the announcement of the new phone shares had jumped from $95.26 to $100.04.

 

Source: Yahoo Finance