Sadly, it's time to mourn the loss of a marketing plan that never got off the ground-- though, ironically, it made bigger press than most of Apple's marketing plans could hope to. Yes, friends, the Golden Ticket promotion never happened and presumably never will. We refer to the widely-lauded plan to include five golden tickets in five random iMac boxes, which would grant the recipients a new Mac each year for five years, and a special tour of the Apple factory, inspired of course by Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Unfortunately, MacCentral reports that the plan was nixed.

Apple's Director of Corporate Marketing, Katie Cotton (remember when she was simply an "Apple spokesperson?" Oh, we're so proud of our little Katie!), refers to the Golden Ticket promotion as "something that [they] were kicking around and [they] have decided to focus on other things." To be sure, there are logistical problems with the plan as originally stated; for one, many states require that manufacturer's contests not require the purchase of a product in order to participate. How would Apple arrange that? Allow people to send in a self-addressed stamped envelope and if it returns with a golden ticket, you win? Yeah, right. Any such mechanism could conceivably work, but it detracts from the whole charm of the original promotion-- which makes for great reading (and a cool movie), but it's not particularly conducive to real-life implementation.

Of course, it's possible that Apple never seriously intended to run the promotion at all, and Steve only described it as something that Apple was "thinking about" in order to grab some free publicity. After all, the Golden Ticket plan was a rather flamboyant one, and sure to snag the attention of the press. Still, we're sorry that the promotion didn't happen; it would have made for some interesting footnotes in Apple's continuing history.

As for iMac promotional campaigns that Apple's actually running, well, we'd have to say that the television commercials are probably the most important. Sure, the twelve-page brochure destined for the pages of Newsweek and the like are nice and attention-getting, and it's great that we'll soon see the iMac's sleek curves on billboards sprinkled throughout our fair city, but TV is the omnipresent and omnipotent controller of all. (If you disagree with that little sentiment, you're not watching it right.) Plus, if your AtAT staff is any indication, the iMac has a definite and possibly inexplicable design appeal for those who stare at the tube way too often. It's soothing, inviting, and also just plain sexy.

So yeah, we're thrilled to see that Apple's advertising the iMac on television. And better yet, they don't have just one commercial, they've got four. As much as we liked all of the Pentium-bashing commercials from the "Think Different" campaign, the fact that Apple generally released them one at a time meant we got kind of sick of each one, because it was the same thing over and over again. Hopefully all four of these iMac commercials will be in the mix at the same time, which will keep them from getting stale too fast.

As for the commercials themselves, if you haven't seen them, they focus tightly on the iMac's simplicity with respect to other personal computers, and to a lesser extent the iMac's beautiful design (primarily simply by showing the systems side by side). All four iMac commercials are posted in QuickTime format at Apple's iMac page, though we were unable to download more than three-quarters of the "Traffic" one-- but it's enough to get an idea of what they're doing. We consider them a must-download, if for no other reason than to keep Jeff Goldblum's cool voiceovers for posterity.

Of course, it doesn't do a whole lot of good to advertise something that you can't sell. Concerns about iMac availability continue to cast a pall over the celebrations, as most retailers put up the "Sold Out" signs before the iMac's debut weekend was through. More stock is expected this week, but Mac the Knife's sources state that Apple will only be able to produce about 180,000 iMacs by the end of August-- down from the 200,000 that sales wanted. Considering that Apple had 150,000 pre-orders as of a week ago, it looks like the backlog won't be filled for another few weeks at least.

By our estimates, if Apple is really spending $100 million on advertising the iMac between now and Christmas, and each iMac carries a profit margin of about 22% for Apple, they've got to sell about 350,000 of them at $1299 apiece in order to break even. We don't think that selling that many will be a problem-- but making them might be. If Apple really has a plant producing iMacs twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and it's still not nearly enough, well, it may just be time to add another plant...

...And none of this takes into account the massive backlog of orders for high-end PowerBook G3's, either. With several people now squarely in their third month of waiting, it's really become a major problem. Now that Apple's got some seriously compelling products to offer, when will they actually be able to deliver?