Apple iPad Promotional Activity Analysis Promotional activities are extremely important in terms of how a company gains and maintains customer traffic. The use of promotional tactics have the capacity to make or break a company, along with being a driving force in placing a company on the map in terms of competing industries. Apple is a company that has utilized clever and timely promotions for its products that have allowed Apple products to become the standard in terms of high quality and recognition within the technology industry. Such vital promotional activity can be seen more specifically in Apple's work with their iPad campaign. In understanding the campaign fully in terms of its reach, frequency, message, target, etc. one can better gauge the overall success of the campaign in order to understand if Apple's promotional tactics have paid off in the long-run.

Promotional Goals

In viewing the promotional goals of Apple in marketing the iPad, one can note the reach, frequency, message and target audience for the product at hand within the market. Before the iPad, the industry had never before seen such hype arise around a single product. Many have noted that all that Apple does -- such as launching its revolutionary iPod and iPhone -- eventually turns to gold, and this can be largely attributed to marketing and promotional activity strategies. Television, radio, internet, conferences, conventions and launch parties are all the areas that Apple promotion benefits from. In hitting all of these areas of notoriety by using the following tactics, Apple has created and maintained a promotional style that is unparalleled in the industry and keeps the company at the top.

The capacity for the iPad to become so successful began with its initial marketing and promotional campaign that asserted that such a product was indeed, for everyone. In an economy left reeling from the recent recession, media that the iPad caters to -- that has long been...

For example, Apple has been in talks with several newspaper and magazine publishers about the distribution of their content on the iPad, which has until now been incapable of reaching mass audiences due to the recent downgrading of the American journalism industry. Because of this, publishers, businesses, and consumers alike are drawn in by Apple's message that distribution of content can be far easier than it has been in the past, along with its target goal of marrying content to fit the device itself (Varley, 2010, p.1).
Apple's previous successes in past products allows its new products, such as the iPad, to reach an audience far broader than other companies, due largely to the fact that consumers wait with increasing expectation for hyped products to eventually hit the shelves, and the majority of this hype is due to Apple's strategic and meticulous marketing and promotional activities. Apple's promotions have proven so successful, that customers decide against waiting for reviews to be released related to the product, but opt to purchase Apple products at unparalleled rates as soon as these products hit the shelves. For example, The Washington Post notes that one thing that has not gone unnoticed in viewing Apple's promotions and advertising is the crushing effect that Apple has had on its competitors. Apple has successfully remade traditional markets in its own image, leaving behind a wake of overturned business models, confounded managements and bereft shareholders (Ritholtz, 2011, p.G6).

Additionally, the iPad was able to garner an exceedingly large target audience through Apple's use of guerilla-style promotions and advertising. Apple's use of promotions, advertising and the limited release of information and prototype images in order to create hype…