Tekserve is the mecca of broken Macs in Manhattan....
Before there were Mac geniuses and genius bars to wait to be noticed at... there was Tekserve. Tekserve has always had an extremely good word of mouth, if you had a Mac and you had a problem someone would clue you in to Tekserve.
So combine a pretty well-established customer base who like you, put a mediocre commercial on YouTube and see what happens.
Here's what: 400,000 people "chose" to view it, 500 people comment on it, and about 1,000 people rated it.
Notice I said 400,000 people chose to view that ad. Clearly the huge reach that traditional advertisers claim dwarfs that number. But how many people skipped them or went to that bathroom versus actually paid attention? What would you give for half a million peopel to choose to view your marketing message, who opted in to watch your ad?
It's not like this ad was one of those particularly clever, shocking, funny viral ads that companies try and deny they funded. Goes to show what you can do with a loyal user base and some crappy camera work. What they had was a good idea, using iPods like dominoes, and have a hook that gets people interested "$60,000 worth of iPods."
The ad was actually created to be shown outside Madison Square Garden. I wonder if they got more attention from the YouTube broadcast than from that, more traditional venue.
This 15-second ad is featured on the 15' x 30' LED Displays outside of Madison Square Garden on 33rd Street & 7th Avenue from 5/1/06 through 6/30/06. Fun fact: Over 200 iPods were used to film this ad.
It looks like The Consumerist uploaded the ad. The Consumerist is part of the Gawker blog media empire, which could have given this ad a well-needed jump start in the blogosphere.
