Nobody expected that when Apple and Google's devices were launched, they would not be met with a glorious future, but with a huge backlash, a massive backlash from all network public opinion.
The core of advertising lies in promoting the features and advantages of one's own products. Generally, as long as it doesn't boast new features that don't exist and only slightly beautifies the advantages of one's own products, it can be considered a conscientious advertisement.
However, if a company exaggerates its own products and promotes things that its products have never had, then it is a false advertisement.
And at this moment, both Google and Apple have fallen into an advertising trap.
Previously, the two companies engaged in an extremely fierce advertising competition to promote their respective smartphones.
In the beginning, the advertisements from both sides were relatively rational. At most, they would promote the selling points of their phones through words, such as Apple promoting its touchscreen, and Android promoting its full keyboard, as well as the app stores that both shared and could freely install applications. These were all within the scope of reasonable advertising.
However, as the advertising war intensified to defeat the opponent, the marketing and planning departments of each company began to disregard the actual capabilities of their products. Today, if you advertise that Apple's phone can take photos equivalent to 5 million pixels, then I will advertise my phone's video function, which can smoothly play 1080p videos.
Anyway, my phone can naturally play 1080p videos, but whether it plays smoothly depends on each person's definition. Anyway, I haven't lied, my phone can indeed play 1080p videos, and it hasn't violated the advertising law.
Later, when inviting various internet celebrities for promotion, both companies had to force the paid internet bloggers to showcase the best side of their products and absolutely not to show any lag or crashes.
In short, in order to surpass their rivals in publicity, both sides began to exaggerate their product capabilities and conceal their product disadvantages infinitely. When this fell into the eyes of consumers, their phones were no longer iPhone 1 or Google 1, but products of iPhone 4 level.
However, advertising cannot change reality. It is 2007, and there are no companies that have specialized in developing chips for mobile phones, nor even chip architectures specifically for mobile phones. The first-generation smartphones produced by the two companies could not possibly reach the level advertised.
Normally, it would take at least another four years to produce such phones.
Neither Apple nor Google noticed the negative impact of the crazy advertising offensive. Instead, they were both immersed in the joy of their pre-orders of 500,000 units being cleared out in one day. Naturally, they overlooked many problems. The ultimate result of all this was the explosion of problems and the explosion of online public opinion.
All users who bought these phones could not accept that the so-called revolutionary communication devices they bought for a full $500 turned out to be useless junk that lagged for 30 seconds every minute, often crashed, and even had terrible call quality, making them want to smash them to the ground.
But after all, these were phones bought for $500, a sum that was enough for an American to eat KFC for a month. It was impossible for them to smash their phones.
As for returns, sorry, these products were purchased through pre-orders. And pre-ordered products cannot be returned, which is a provision of US law.
Therefore, these users who bought Google or Apple phones through pre-orders could only roar in anger, but they could do nothing to the companies. Would they really smash these phones?
But holding the phone in their hands constantly reminded them that they were fools who had been tricked into buying the most misleading product in the world.
In the end, all this pent-up anger was vented on Google and Apple. Almost all online forums and social media were uniformly and fiercely denouncing these two companies.
Even Google, which controlled search engines and the largest advertising alliance, was completely unable to control the online public opinion at this time, after all, social media networks like Weibo were entirely in the hands of another party.
Speaking of companies like Weibo, Google and Apple were itching with hatred.
These companies, which had previously received a massive amount of advertising fees from them, were now completely allowing public opinion on their platforms to erupt. Some of their internet celebrities even directly jumped on board to criticize Google and Apple along with the online sentiment.
Platforms like Weibo even directly approached Google and Apple to communicate, telling them that they didn't want to do this, after all, they had such a deep relationship.
But the problem was that this was the current online public opinion, and the previous promotions by Weibo, Los Gatos, and Netflix had not been very popular, so many viewers had also vented their anger on these platforms.
To quell the fire, they had to let their internet celebrities jump ship. They claimed this was something they had to do to protect themselves, and hoped Apple and Google could forgive them.
This directly made the two companies so angry that they almost spewed blood.
But even if they had spewed all their blood, it would have been useless. The immediate priority for Google and Apple was to resolve user anger.
After all, the image that Google and Apple had previously built in the minds of users was very high-end, centered on technology, investing heavily in technological development, possessing the world's best research environment and the most research achievements, and leading the development of the global electronics and internet industries.
Even the corporate culture of Apple and Google had become an object of envy for all online audiences. How could they play table tennis or even golf in the office? They could come and go freely without clocking in, and even work from home, with superiors not imposing any KPI requirements, only hoping that everyone would work happily and joyfully.
These things, which seemed like a joke to many, had become the firm belief of most audiences worldwide. These high-tech companies were just that awesome!
As a result, with this public opinion incident, the images of the two companies began to collapse violently, almost like the final season of Attack on Titan.
Logically, the best course of action at this time would be to announce a recall of all devices and provide some compensation to the users who purchased them, thereby salvaging their image.
However, such a measure, which almost declared complete failure, would not be taken unless absolutely necessary. They were still hoping for a way to resolve the issue properly.
Therefore, at this critical juncture, the controllers of both companies, Larry Page and Steve Jobs, coincidentally chose to meet each other to reach a dignified solution for both parties through negotiation.
Although Google and Apple were fiercely competing, it did not hinder the friendship between the two company leaders. Apple had provided assistance to Google during its startup phase, and later Google facilitated Jobs' return. Therefore, their relationship was quite good, and they often met to play golf, although they never discussed their companies during their games.
However, they could no longer afford to be so nonchalant. As soon as they met, they got straight to the core issue.
"We can't keep fighting each other!" Page said directly. "The current situation is the result of our competition without any bottom lines. Only when we both stop can we possibly salvage this situation!"
"I have no objections!" Jobs nodded.
"Actually, what has happened in the past few days has also sobered me up. I reviewed the marketing reports for the past six months and found that we spent over $1.5 billion on marketing alone. We would need to sell 10 million devices to even recoup this money, which is really putting the cart before the horse!"
"So, I suggest that both of us stop running competitive advertisements, or simply stop running any advertisements for a while. Future advertising should also be reasonably restrained, and we should stop this meaningless war!" Page said.
"That can be done!" Jobs' reply was still concise. He took a sip of the clear tea in front of him and said lightly, "But those are matters for later. The most important thing for us is to resolve the current predicament. How to re-establish our company images in front of consumers is the most crucial!"
"The current situation looks very complicated, but it's actually very simple. These consumers are just enraged by the huge contrast, and all anger can be erased by time."
"So, all we need to do is maintain silence. After about ten days to half a month, most consumers will have forgotten about these things. Then we will release a few patches to optimize our respective systems."
"I've already had the technical department conduct tests. As long as we lock down some features and close some background programs, we can basically maintain system smoothness."
"Then we'll turn these into a patch and release it as a phone optimization. Let all phones automatically upgrade, and the smoothness of the phones will form a stark contrast before and after, which will naturally appease many consumers."
"Then we'll market the hard work of our technical department, claiming they created the most powerful optimization patch in history in just half a month. With such publicity, our company images can be re-established!" Jobs said casually, outlining a complete solution in just a few words.
"But if we free up chip processing power by locking down features, wouldn't that revert our phones back to the feature phone era?" Page asked with a frown.
"Consumers don't understand that much. As long as they feel good, that's enough!" Jobs said expressionlessly.