How Apple Event invites walk a communications tightrope

The communication floats down from the digital mountaintop in the land of Cupertino, typically two or three times per year. The masses, eagerly awaiting the message, try to glean meaning from its sparse words and graphical flourishes. High priests offer interpretation, attempting to decipher what is being foretold.

Stone tablets? No. Apple Event invites, of course. Sometimes, they include just a dash of wink-wink insight as to what might be revealed when the lights go on in Steve Jobs Theater. (Or, in the COVID-19 era, when the video file streams.)

The creation process for these invites must be a huge challenge. You must be clever. You must be efficient. You want to tie the headline and graphics into the coming product reveals in a simple way without sharing too much information. And you never want to create false expectations—especially for Wall Street.

This week Apple issued its invite for its “Spring Loaded” event, where it’s widely speculated the company will introduce updated iPad Pros and other products at 10 AM Pacifc time on April 20.

Does the invite tell us anything beyond the theme and time?

Stern is right. It’s fun to speculate, but let’s keep a firm grasp on reality.

One of products speculated to be announced is a new iMac, in a series of spring colors:

The iMac colors—a guess in the graphic above—aren’t a perfect match to the colors in the Apple logo in the invite, but they’re in the ballpark.

Combine that with the observation about the swirls that make up the Apple logo:

Hmm.

If the speculation turns out to be correct, then Apple did an excellent job of dropping a subtle hint inside the “springtime” take on its logo.

In the end, Apple Event invites deliver extra value beyond their basic task, which is to tell us when the show starts. The invites fuel online conversation using simple and subtle hints to stoke speculation and curiosity. But it’s a delicate walk: the invites don’t intentionally mislead, use empty hype, or employ tech buzzwords.

We can all learn from Apple’s clean and clever invite strategy. And then we can enjoy the show—and see if we guessed correctly.