News Alert: Steve Jobs is Speaking!

New York Times, front and center: Apple's Steve Jobs holding the iPad

Good friends – senior execs in the field of corporate communications – tell me of getting calls from executive search recruiters assigned to fill senior level PR positions at Dell Computer in Austin, Texas. A few have gone through Dell’s interview process, more out of curiosity and a free trip to Austin than anything else.

No one I know has accepted an offer from Dell. “It’s like falling down a rabbit hole,” chuckled one friend, referring to Alice in Wonderland.

Candidates are parked in a stark and small interrogation room with a single light while enduring a steady stream of interviews over two days. Few of the senior people at Dell’s corporate communications have solid credentials, I’ve learned, including the top guy who is more consumed with bragging about hanging out with rock stars than being concerned that his company is getting its ass kicked by Apple. It’s all old-school. Michael Dell, by the way, the founder of Dell, apparently remains sequestered in a bunker behind company headquarters, pretty much alone. Visions of Howard Hughes.

Steve Jobs in the New York Times. Photo by Jim Wilson.

Apple is, indeed, kicking Dell’s ass … crassly stated and competitively. While Dell trudges along, introducing cheaply made laptops, Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs is again capturing world headlines by introducing yet another gotta-have product. Latest is the iPad.

I examined the polar-opposite approaches of Apple and Dell in my newest book, “Making News in the Digital Era.” Dell’s communications department is terminally unresponsive to media inquiries, almost as if fearing media contact, circa 1970s style of PR. They, too, have a bunker mentality, like their boss.

Apple, on the other hand, is breath-taking. Not only are specific top communications people easily reachable, but they dream-up the cleverest and most effective strategies to capture headlines I have ever seen. Apple’s team is action-oriented and accountable; Dell’s is out-of-touch.

Apple's iPad. Available in late March.

The level of advance, event and aftermath mainstream and online media, Twittering, blogging and online chatter of Steve’s latest toy is without measure. I would dare say that more people in the world know and care more about the iPad than will care to know what comes out of President Obama’s mouth during the State of the Union speech.

Dell, by contrast, no longer casts much of a shadow as a company, due largely to poor communications.

Category: Apple, Brand Journalism, Featured