“At any given time, an iPod advertisement will grace the airwaves. The Pepsi/iTunes promotion has also kicked into high gear, so the Apple logo can be seen in a lot of places. With all this buzz about Apple’s digital music division, I find something missing,” Eric Schwarz writes for SchwarzTech.
“The Mac Mini is being ignored. Quite frankly, the computer that could easily boost Apple’s market share is still unknown to many. Sure, it has been mentioned in many newspapers and magazines, but many people still don’t know what makes it better than a Dell or Gateway. The Mac Mini needs to be advertised on TV to an obnoxiously, similar to how U2’s ‘Vertigo’ has become almost synonymous with an iPod commercial,” Schwarz writes.
Full article here.
[NOTE, 3:40pm ET: The “Mac Tablet” story was pulled due to its ripe old age. Sorry ’bout that one! – ]
Great little Falsh Ad…
Jefre
Ken…
Our local ChompUSA has a part time Apple rep, and the times we both happened to be in the store at the same time, I found him to be really knowledgable and helpful…
When I went in to play with the G5 towers… I was lucky enough to be there when he was… While I was drooling over Garage Band (ver 1 at the time)… he was more than happy to demo it for me…. and the nice part was… he seem to be just as enthused about GB and the Mac, itself.. as much as I was !!
On the flip side … I have never met a Mac head at Frys…. only people who would gladly sell me generic parts they say will work in Macs, even though they have no clue… Because of this … I have always avoided Frys… like the plague !
Hey, I know. Let’s all keep saying the same thing over and over again.
Mac minis enjoyed a sell-out launch at three Apple centres in SA on Saturday, when the entire shipment of about 80 units was sold in three hours.
The new Mac minis are Apple’s entry-level products, sold without a keyboard, mouse or monitor. All three of the Apple centres say their entire consignments were either sold outright or are largely spoken for.
The centres have received back orders for a number of machines, although they are not sure when the next shipments will arrive.
………
He adds that while a number of people were attracted to the store through curiosity about the Mac mini, they bought some of the higher-spec and higher-priced G5 workstations instead.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200502280844.html
Awesome ad Kassandra! Everyone NEEDS to watch her add. I think that these little computers are sooooo cute. I want one so so so bad!!!! please someone buy me one for my 20th bday on March 17! I will do anything for one! I mean anything!
Kassandra
Thats a great “commercial” you put together….
I wonder, though, with all the talent out there among the Mac Community …. if someone with access to some bandwidth, could put up a website, and invite the creative to post commercials they would like to see from Apple…
Who knows ? …. maybe even His Steveness might catch wind of this effort, and point his Ad Agency in the right direction !!
(well, one can dream…right ?)
No advertisement in France for the Mac mini. Is this because Apple can’t build enough mini?
Cause its a F.L.O.P.
personally i can’t imagine how to advertise the mac mini with out just advertising the whole shurbang like iMacs powermacs etc and especially the mac os, esp difficult
ipod is p**s easy to advertise and make cool
Yer dead right DrBadAss.
Apple are having real problems keeping up with orders as it is.
When they’ve got the production up and orders level off, then it may be worth the millions necessary for a nation-wide (or world-wide) campaign.
In that respect, it’s really good news that Apple isn’t advertising. Because it probably means that sales are really very high
The Mac mini has been topping the Amazon best-seller list for weeks. Have a look:-
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/565098/ref=pc_tn_4/104-9584337-2830368
Duhh….
One advertises to build “demand” for a product. Since the mac mini demand has outstripped supply since day one, and all forms of media have given the mac mini unprecedented free coverage, why would Apple spend money to advertise when they don’t have to? Look for another excellent quarter from Apple.
They don’t really need to advertise.. and if they did.. it would be difficult to plug the OS..
what they do is plug the iTUnes store, which plugs iPOds, which gets people to Apple Stores or REsellers or the Website, where you’ll see the goods.. and THEN.. wham.. “Apple makes computers? It runs Office? Wow this is slick? Huh? No viruses.. 500 bucks?? this is apple?!”
the fact that the mac mini is backlogged 4 weeks should tell how how little advertising is needed at this point.
“Why spend millions on ads if you can’t sell the product?”
General Motors did just this in spectacularly bad fashion last fall. Remember when Oprah Winfrey’s audience members each got a new Pontiac G6? It was a great marketing coup, but unfortunately it pulled a ton of people into empty showrooms! The G6 was just starting to become available, and few dealers had any product!!! Today the buzz is gone and GM is already scaling back production. As Ballmer would put it, “Rebates! Rebates! Rebates!”.
Apple is doing exactly the right thing by waiting. Besides, when product is backordered it’s selling itself; you don’t need marketing.
Great Commercial Kassandra!! Apple should hire you. That said, I do agree that while the mini is selling so well that they have problems with supply, they probably don’t want to be advertising and having people go to buy it and end up pissed because they couldn’t get one. I predict we are going to see a big advertising push when Tiger comes out. They could ramp up their supply chain and be ready to take the market by storm. God I hope they advertise it. They really should.
Maybe iPods sell well through TV ads. Maybe Macs don’t sell so well through TV ads — maybe they sell well through magazine ads, or the most popular computer website apple.com, or effective press coverage, or Apple stores in high profile locations, or any number of other venues.
Why presume that TV ads are a crucial advertising venue? You don’t see Sony Vaio ads, or Toshiba, or HP or IBM (who have many TV ads, but rarely for their PCs).
I don’t know about anyone else, but if I was running a cutting-edge marketing department, I would test ads in various media and measure the results. Then I would place more ads where they were doing the most good. It’s possible that Apple folks are missing this, but it seems unlikely.
Great ad Kassandra — pure awareness with a subliminal iPod connection. I particularly like the mention of “Fa [cough] st” — a big stretch at Apple’s standard 256MBs.
Being a tech marketer, and a life-long Mac fan, the reason why Apple isn’t pushing the Mini hard is:
1. They’re on allocation so why advertise the Mini and piss people off that they have to wait 2-3 weeks for them
2. They’re “relatively” low margin units so not advertising them helps their margin
3. They’ve got a lot more at stake w/the iPod so they’re putting their dollars behind it rather than Macs
4. I agree w/the other posters, that Apple’s waiting till Tiger’s release before making a desktop push
Just my two cents
Along with the fact that there aren’t enough Mac minis available for sale, I think Apple realizes that TV ads don’t sell computers. Through the music, the iPod ads raise awareness of the Apple brand, and leads to iPod sales by making them cool. No amount of advertising will make a computer cool. Apple’s goal is to get people into an Apple store, ostensibly to buy an iPod or iPod accessory, but then have them notice that Apple sells Macs.
With that said, I would challenge Apple to test if an advertising blitz for Tiger, while showcasing the various beautiful Macs running Tiger, will raise awareness of Macs and make computing cooler than it is now.
The longer-term strategy is to start advertising when Apple’s wireless home entertainment network, served up by some Mac-based server, is ready. Still waiting for that Airport Express remote!!!
Kassandra that was a really good ad men! love it
Keeping my powder dry until I see the Tiger ads.
I don’t think they need to market macs. They already get millions of people into the stores with the iPod brand and ads. Unless they want to highlight Tiger’s features in the next few months, I see no reason to run ads.
“You can try to catch a turtle, but you’ll never get fried chicken”
-Sergio Q.
Make it viral Kassy baby
Well they have few/no ads, however they had the one where the guy was blown against the tree by the immense power of his g5 tower, and the one with the tall guy and the short guy on the airplane with the albooks. Anyway, if they did have any/more ads, me and all my friends would prolly just tivo them out anyhow. They are selling their stuff they way that people buy stuff. Steve somehow creates crazy media buzz and gets mad media coverage, much much more than any other computer company or music company for that matter. They make stuff right so that people who use them are so totally captivated by the exceptional experience that it creates for them that they literally feel compelled to tell everyone they know even if their friends percieve them as raving lunatics, and tell them that puters are just “tools”. Well I for one like really really good tools that are reliable as hell and work all the time no matter what. In addition to being a muscian who uses protools on my mac, I am a amateur mehanic, and thats why I use only mac for fixing my car ( my daddy is a mechanic ). I spent over a grand on my tools, and that was a cheap ebay deal. But everything always works and never “crashes”, or deletes your data (er bolts). They will also last hundreds of years. I have no idea if it is a crazy iCoincidence, or if it is true that everything “MAC” just plain rocks, but I also have a pair of mcintosh monoblock tube amps, which make my cds sound better than when I was playing them live. That said, I want one of those adorable mac minis so bad it hurts!!!
If you buy a new car it is not necessarily in stock and one has to wait weeks to get it.
If you buy name-brand furniture it is not in stock and one has to wait weeks (months) to get it.
But yet both type companies still advertise all the time.
Just a thought : Apple’s probably trying to see how far the mini can go (in terms of sales) without any advertisments. This is just the 2nd month of the product’s life and they probably have already sold enough of the minis to recover any R&D cost they invested in it. So there’s not a real necessity for them to push for the sale of it.