The Real Genius: Apple Ads Are Being Distributed By The Media

During the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, Apple aired three ads for its Genius Bar. Over the ensuing weekend, a number of widely-read blogs posted mostly negative pieces about the ads.

Today, Apple's ad agency told Mashable that the ads are no longer running and they were only intended to run the first weekend of the Games. Again, several posts were written on widely-read sites.

And therein lies the real "Genius" of the ads: we're still talking about them.

Mashable, Forbes and Venturebeat all embedded at least one of the ads in their posts today. MacRumors linked to the ads on Apple and YouTube. GigaOm was the only reputable source that did neither (though they linked to their previous coverage and Mashable's coverage, both of which had embedded videos). I don't particularly care about the bottomfeeders because they just rewrote Mashable's coverage (and did a poor job, at that).

Let's go back to last Monday, July 30:

Again, almost all of the publications, especially the bigger ones, embedded video or linked to the ads, with the top three headliners doing the former. The Mayday, Labor Day and Basically ads have been viewed 666,000, 404,000 and 544,000 times, respectively, on YouTube, putting them in the same range for views as the Siri celebrity ads that have been out for months. No stats are available for views on the Apple website.

So, why do we care? People like watching Apple ads, and we like writing about all things Apple. Some idiots even like writing about other people writing about Apple ads.

We care because even in making a shitty ad, Apple has won with this ad campaign. The media has shared Apple's ads for the past two weeks for free.

But even more impressively, bloggers have gotten the point of Apple's campaign across better than the ads did.

In all of the posts I've read about them, the authors write about how it is a break from traditionally well-received Apple ads. And then they get to the point of the ads: Apple Geniuses. A good number tout the quality of Apple customer service and how the ads miss the mark in getting that across.

Basically, Apple ran this Genius ad campaign themselves.

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Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. in January 2007. Among the key offerings from Apple's product line are: Pro line laptops (MacBook Pro) and desktops (Mac Pro), consumer line laptops (MacBook Air) and desktops (iMac), servers (Xserve), Apple TV, the Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server operating systems, the iPod, the...

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