#PRFail: Oh, Snap! Goes the iPhone – More Specifically, the iPhone 6
To say that back in 2007, first iPhone disrupted the cell phone industry would be like saying Alexander Graham Bell’s 1876 invention cause a stir in communications.
With its simple, elegant touchscreen face design, the iPhone made its then competitors – candy bar and flip style cellphones – obsolete practically overnight.
That was largely true until 2014 and the iPhone 6 – the model now associated with – and very much maligned for – “#bendgate” (Anytime you have a hashtag that ends with “-gate” that’s definitely not good.)
Like previous models, the iPhone 6 debuted with the now expected fanfare. And as with every new iteration, this latest iPhone came with a bevy of new features. One in particular, was the iPhone 6 itself. Apple claimed that the phone would not bend if pressure was applied.1
“Revolutionary”. “Game changer”. These were among the terms used to describe Apple’s first-generation mobile device in 2007. Hundreds of customers lined up to gets their hands on it. It was even dubbed by some in the media as the “Jesus Phone”. A year later the new and improved 3G version debuted to much critical acclaim. And the third, even better iPhone debuted to ever more amazing sales the year after that. It seemed the iPhone series was incapable of doing wrong.
Well, as with any claim Apple made about its products, especially one with such a high profile as its then newest flagship iPhone, that claim was put to the test – on video courtesy of tech reviewer Unbox Therapy. Check out the bending here. Let’s just say that the results were not what Apple hoped. And that one video alone has had more than 69 million views.
Spoiler alert: It turned out that despite the claim, the iPhone 6 did in fact bend, and without applying that much force, as you can see. Uh, boy.
Thus, the hashtag, #bendgate was born – and the backlash from Apple fans began.
As overwhelmingly good as Apple’s quality control has been have proven to be (present company excepted) their PR department seemed to be lacking, at least at the time.
By lack I mean a lack of action. Apple did respond to the controversy via a statement to the media but instead of offering a solution of the very real problem, they chose to tout the quality of the phone’s construction and minimized the scope of the incidents to just nine customers.2
Not Apple’s finest moment.
Your customers are not going to care how good your processes are if the product or service doesn’t work in practice. And worse still, telling them in so many words that you’re problem isn’t really a problem at all is just going go make things that much worse, because it doesn’t matter how few people Apple may have thought were affected by the flaw, it matters from a PR point of view: The world – and their audience – was learning that their very expensive iPhones were breaking.
This was an opportunity Apple didn’t have to miss. And they paid for the oversight as does any very well-known company does – in the press:
The Guardian: Will iPhone 6 ‘bendgate’ take a bite out of Apple?
Mashable: The Apple iPhone 6 Plus ‘BendGate’ Is Already Out of Control
CNN Business: Is the iPhone 6 Plus bendable?
The ensuing flood of memes, jokes and other mocking came in droves. You know how the old saying goes, the bigger they are…
And people love to watch a PR train wreck unfold, especially in real time – even other big companies, especially competitors like Samsung and LG got in on the mockery while showcasing their own phones via #bendgate:
Samsung took their jab with, “Curved. Not bent.”
LG mocked with, “Our phone doesn’t bend, it flexes…on purpose.”
Even noncompetitors joined in. KitKat posted an image of their famed wafer bar snapped in two, captioned, “45˚”.3 (Wow! Even a candy company couldn’t resist!)
Apple could have gotten ahead of the bad news and addressed the problem immediately instead of putting themselves up and dismissing the complaints out hand.
Of all companies, the one literally creating the bleeding edge of communications technology failed to take into account the power of social media and the press. (What an irony, huh?) When Apple launches a new iPhone, the world stops and watches, exactly as Apple wants it to.
Apple did seem to learn their lesson rather quickly from #bendgate. For one, to mitigate both their PR damage and the physical kind to the iPhones, they allowed for any affected customers to replace any damaged phones under warranty after a visual inspection.4
But the real proof came later that same year when Apple updated its latest operating system (iOS). Turns out the update was disrupting cellular activity and shutting down the TouchID function – and Apple, to their credit, jumped on the issue immediately. Getting to work fast, they apologized for causing a “great inconvenience”, yanked the defective software, and pushed out a fix the following day.5
Just like with its products, Apple knows what being the best looks like.
Part of your calling as a business leader is to be ready to handle any bad press, deserved or not, that may come your way. When that happens, you need to handle the situation with the utmost delicacy. One wrong tweet or message to the press can turn an already unpleasant situation into an utter PR disaster. That’s why you need JOTO PR Disruptors’ crisis management services to ensure you come out of it with the least amount of damage.
Already in a crisis situation? Don’t wait – call us today at 888-919-4034.
Sources:
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Appleton, Brian. “10 Social Media Fails to Avoid in 2020.” Hubspot, 23 April 2020, blog.hubspot.com/marketing/avoid-social-media-fails.
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Spence, Ewan. “Apple Responds To The iPhone 6 Bendgate But Questions Remain.” Forbes, 25 September 2014, forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2014/09/25/apple-does-not-say-sorry-over-bendgate/?sh=1b2260245329.
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McCarthy, John. “How Samsung, LG, KitKat and other brands reacted to Apple’s iPhone 6 #Bendgate.” The Drum, 25 September 2014, thedrum.com/news/2014/09/25/how-samsung-lg-kitkat-and-other-brands-reacted-apple-s-iphone-6-bendgate.
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Clover, Juli. “Apple: Bending in iPhone 6 Plus From Normal Use ‘Extremely Rare’, Only 9 Customers Have Complained.” MacRumors, 25 September 2014, macrumors.com/2014/09/25/apple-responds-to-bending-issues/.
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Wakabayashi, Daisuke. “Apple Rebuts Complaints of Bending iPhones.” The Wall Street Journal, 25 September 2014, wsj.com/articles/apple-defends-against-complaints-of-bending-iphones-1411668618.