Apple riding wave of iPhone hype

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

Some day business students may even look back at the first half of 2007 to learn about Apple's best marketing campaign ever. The iPhone will finally arrive on Friday after six months of hype across all media.

What did Apple do to mount that campaign? Not much. It simply introduced the iPhone in January with one of CEO Steve Jobs' patented dog-and-pony 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 like Intel, Microsoft or Hewlett-Packard.

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

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.

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 website about phones that it approves for sale, denying Apple the opportunity to control the way people first learned about the iPhone, he said.

Instead, Apple launched the product with a minimum of information, and since January loyalists have flooded Apple-focussed blogs 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 by fans and Wall Street investors alike.

Traditional marketing isn't dead yet, however.

Apple has been running several television commercials on major broadcast and cable networks showing off the user interface of the iPhone, and influential reviewers from major newspapers are likely to devote their Thursday columns to the iPhone.

Tom Krazit writes for CNET News.com