So let's see, for the iMac advertising campaign, Apple's got a lot of bases covered... There's the radio countdown that blitzed the airwaves last week, the new TV commercial that's supposed to premiere during Sunday's "Wonderful World of Disney" on ABC, the twelve-page pullouts in major consumer magazines, and the billboards going up in major cities all over the country. Mac retailers all over the place are plastered with banners and posters, and festooned with iMac balloons. There's even a front-page iMac ad in CompUSA's Sunday circular, which probably marks the first time that an Apple system has grabbed such a prominent display in that perennially Mac-poor publication. Did Apple forget anything?

Apparently not, according to a story on Apple's web page. In addition to all the stuff listed above, Apple even has a twenty-foot-high inflatable iMac blimp displayed on its campus. That's right; in response to one employee's off-the-cuff remark about how cool it would be to have a giant iMac blimp, Apple went ahead and had one built. Actually, they thought the idea was so cool, they had thirty-nine of them built, and the others are being displayed all over the world. There are some great photos to go with the story, and if you want, you can even download a short QuickTime 3 movie of the giant iMac being inflated.

It's a great bit of irony to see a huge, towering representation of a computer that, in reality, takes up an incredibly tiny amount of space. Suppose the blimp qualifies as "public art?" If so, I think we've found a suitable replacement for the recently-decommissioned Icon Garden. ;-)