Apple Banner Goes Viral, Then Crashes

NEW YORK The "Get a Mac" ads have become fixtures on YouTube, inspiring dozens of parodies of the spots starring the hipster "Mac Guy" and nerdy "PC Guy." Now, an Apple effort touting its Leopard operating system has generated another viral hit with the most prosaic of ad forms: the banner. Yesterday, Apple began running Flash-enabled video banners that show the Mac and PC guys in a placement on the right-hand side of the screen. While discussing the problems some users have with Microsoft's new Vista operating system, the PC Guy tries to illuminate a "Don't Give Up On Vista" sign in the banner at the top of the page. It malfunctions, leaving the sign constantly flashing, "Give Up On Vista." The placement, created by Omnicom Group's TBWA\Media Arts Lab, quickly struck a chord in the tech community, setting off something perhaps unprecedented: blog posts and message-board discussions about the banners, and even a YouTube video showing the ad in action. The video, which Apple fan site MacRumors.com uploaded, has received over 70,000 views since it was uploaded on late Tuesday, making it the ninth most viewed clip of the day. One small problem: the ad has caused some browsers to crash and others to have audio problems, which led Engadget to pull the placement today. In a post, Engadget editor Ryan Block apologized to visitors. Apple ran the ad on several technology blogs and sites, including CNET's News.com, Engadget and PCWorld.com. (Placements on the latter were replaced by different executions later in the day. An agency rep said she was unaware of problems with the ads, which are scheduled to run next week on WSJ.com and CNN.com.) Despite the technical problems, the push certainly resonated with techies. At MacRumors, a short post on the ad attracted more than 130 comments. On TechCrunch, writer Duncan Riley praised the effort—and the post drew 50 comments. It also landed on the front page of TechMeme, a popular tech aggregation site. On Digg, the story attracted nearly 2,500 "digs," making it the leading topic on the homepage. While many praised the ad's creativity, some bloggers said the work, which targeted PC areas of sites, showed an increasing arrogance on Apple's part. (Others pointed out that Apple, not Microsoft, had caused browser crashes and systems problems.) "Microsoft should run an ad about how Apple sits around claiming everything they make is perfect and flawless, but tends to come riddled with stupid little problems," wrote the InsideMicrosoft blog.

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Apple Banner Goes Viral, Then Crashes

Brian Morrissey

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