Katie Cotton, who as Apple’s longtime communications chief guarded the media’s entry to Steve Jobs, the corporate’s visionary co-founder, and helped manage the introduction of a lot of his merchandise, died on April 6 in Redwood Metropolis, Calif. She was 57.
Her demise, in a hospital, was confirmed by Michael Mimeles, her former husband. He didn’t give a trigger however mentioned that she had skilled problems from coronary heart surgical procedure she underwent just a few years in the past.
Ms. Cotton, who constructed a tradition of thriller by saying comparatively little, if something, to reporters, joined Apple in 1996 and started working with Mr. Jobs the following 12 months, quickly after he returned to the corporate after 12 years away. Apple was in poor monetary form on the time, however Ms. Cotton labored with Mr. Jobs to engineer a putting turnaround.
Collectively they crafted a tightly managed public relations technique as the corporate recovered from steep losses and turned out one profitable product after one other, together with the iMac desktop laptop and progressive digital gadgets just like the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad.
“She was formidable and difficult and really protecting of each Apple’s model and Steve, significantly when he acquired sick,” Walt Mossberg, a former expertise columnist for The Wall Road Journal, mentioned in a telephone interview, referring to Mr. Jobs’s analysis of pancreatic most cancers in 2004. He added: “She was one of many few folks he trusted implicitly. He listened to her. She may pull him again from one thing he supposed to do or say.”
Ms. Cotton spoke tersely, if in any respect, when reporters questioned her, however she may very well be useful when talking off the report or on background.
“She was accessible, she was a degree of contact, however typically it was hand-to-hand fight in the event that they needed to convey a narrative to the world and it wasn’t the story I needed to inform,” John Markoff, a former expertise reporter for The New York Occasions, mentioned by telephone.
Ms. Cotton additionally selected which reporters may converse to Mr. Jobs (despite the fact that he would sometimes converse, on his personal, to journalists he knew effectively). In 1997 she invited a Newsweek reporter, Katie Hafner, to observe the primary business in Apple’s new “Suppose Completely different” promoting marketing campaign, together with Mr. Jobs.
A tribute to “the loopy ones, the misfits, the rebels and the troublemakers,” a narrator intoned because the business opened with a nonetheless image of Mr. Jobs holding an apple in his left hand and continued with clips of people that modified the world, amongst them Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, John Lennon, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Edison and Muhammad Ali.
“I appeared over and Steve was crying,” Ms. Hafner, who wrote about Apple for Newsweek and later for The New York Occasions, mentioned in a telephone interview. “I checked out Katie and I couldn’t inform if she was moved or feeling triumphant — I don’t know — however I used to be stuffed with admiration for her, as a result of she knew how you can play this and to present me entry.”
Richard Stengel, a former managing editor of Time journal, mentioned in an e mail that Mr. Jobs “would name me 5 or 6 occasions in a day to inform me I ought to do a narrative or not,” and that Ms. Cotton would “ceaselessly name proper after and gently apologize or pull again one thing he had mentioned.” He added, “She was very loyal, however she noticed him in an unvarnished manner.”
Kathryn Elizabeth Cotton was born on Oct. 30, 1965, in Washington, N.J. Her father, Philip, labored for a telecommunications firm. Her mom, Marie (Cuvo) Cotton, held varied jobs, together with caterer.
After graduating from the College of Arizona in 1988 with a bachelor’s diploma in journalism, Ms. Cotton labored at Dav-El Limousine in Los Angeles in gross sales, advertising and marketing and public relations earlier than transferring to the general public relations company Allison Thomas Associates. The corporate’s expertise purchasers included Mr. Jobs, who was then working Subsequent Software program. However Ms. Thomas and Mr. Jobs had a falling-out earlier than Ms. Cotton was employed round 1994.
“She was nice at what she did,” Ms. Thomas mentioned in a telephone interview, “but it surely took some time for her obsessive work habits to grow to be clear.”
In mid-1996, when Gilbert Amelio was Apple’s chief govt, the struggling firm employed Ms. Cotton to assist with its public relations. “Katie did tech P.R. earlier than it was hip and funky to do, and Apple wanted somebody along with her expertise,” Mr. Mimeles, her ex-husband, who additionally labored at Apple, mentioned in a telephone interview.
In late 1996, Apple acquired Subsequent, which introduced Mr. Jobs again to Apple as an adviser. He would grow to be the corporate’s interim chief govt in 1997 and chief govt three years later. That 12 months he elevated Ms. Cotton to run Apple’s public relations and communications and ultimately named her vp of worldwide communications, a title she held for a few years.
“When Steve got here again, he didn’t simply put key engineers in place,” Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vp of promoting, mentioned by telephone. “He put the fitting folks in place to steer us across the firm, and Katie was a giant a part of that.”
She continued to work for Mr. Jobs, whereas saying little publicly about his well being issues, till his demise in 2011, after which labored for Tim Prepare dinner, his successor, till she retired in 2014.
One measure of her affect was a headline in Macworld journal: “Apple PR’s Cotton departs: What it may imply for the press.”
Ms. Cotton by no means held one other company job. She did some company consulting and mentored younger folks at Menlo-Atherton Excessive College in Atherton, Calif., which her kids attended, and on the Riekes Heart, a nonprofit instructional group in Menlo, Calif.
Ms. Cotton is survived by her mom; a daughter, Isabelle Mimeles; a son, Ethan Mimeles; her associate, Jim Wells; her sisters, Lori Ann David and Patty Stewart; and her brother, Richard Cotton.
After Mr. Jobs died, the promoting company TBWA/Media Arts Lab screened a proposed business for Ms. Cotton and two different Apple executives.
“It’s unhappy when a founder dies,” the business started, Tripp Mickle wrote in “After Steve: How Apple Turned a Trillion-Greenback Firm and Misplaced Its Soul” (2022). “You surprise if you can also make it with out him. Must you put your courageous face on for the world, or simply be trustworthy?”
When it completed, Ms. Cotton was weeping.
“We will’t run this,” she mentioned. They by no means did.
