Apple basks in the iPhone buzz

As iPhone Week dawns, one thing is clear: marketing is much easier -- and cheaper -- if you let other people do it for you.

Some day business students will look back at the first half of 2007 to learn about Apple's best marketing campaign ever, and maybe one of the best ever in American business. The iPhone will finally arrive in the US on Friday after six months of up-to-the-second coverage from even local television types who think the EDGE network is the channel next to VH1.

And what did Apple do to mount that campaign? Not much. It simply introduced the iPhone in January with one of CEO Steve Jobs' patented shows, bought ad space during the Academy Awards to say "hello", and only within the last few weeks started a broader ad campaign.

Say what you want about Apple, its products, its leader, and its fans, but the company has figured out how to appeal to consumers like no other company in technology -- and with a smaller marketing budget than companies such as Intel, Microsoft or Hewlett-Packard. Apple has perfected the art of buzz during the Internet's second act, Web 2.0.

"They simply do a masterful job of capturing the imagination of just about everyone," wrote Jim Lattin, a professor of marketing at Stanford University's graduate business school, in an email interview.

Traditional ways of reaching potential customers are changing rapidly, as any newspaper employee will tell you. Some companies have plunged headlong into a new-media frenzy, setting up shop inside virtual worlds such as Second Life or trying to create 'grassroots' viral video campaigns.

But a passionate, almost evangelical base of supporters makes any marketing campaign easier. Apple's reliance on a horde of loyal fans thirsty for information is the catalyst for its marketing.

Usually, Apple likes to announce its products and start the marketing effort very close to the actual date those products are available, if not the same day, said Ross Rubin, an analyst with The NPD Group. That wasn't an option this time around, since the Federal Communications Commission posts information on its Web site about phones that it approves for sale, denying Apple the opportunity to control the way people first learned about the iPhone, he said.

So instead, Apple launched the product with a minimum of information, and since January those loyalists have flooded Apple-oriented blogs such as AppleInsider, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, or MacRumors.com, searching for any scrap of information related to Apple and the iPhone.

Gadget blogs such as Engadget and Gizmodo stoke the fire further with their acerbic takes on the Apple universe. Engadget actually caused a brief plunge in Apple's stock in May when it reported, and then retracted, a story that Apple was planning to delay the iPhone until October.

That was a sure sign that any information related to Apple, and especially the iPhone, is being scrutinised like perhaps no other product launch by fanboys and Wall Street investors alike. Larger Web sites and media outlets see intense demand for iPhone-related traffic heading to other sites, and are compelled to follow suit.

Apple is launching the iPhone right at a time when content aggregation sites such as digg, Techmeme and even Google News can put a potential customer in front of hundreds, if not thousands, of possibly interesting stories about the product. All Apple has to do is trickle out information every now and then, as it has done in the weeks leading up to Friday's launch, and watch the frenzy take hold.