Come for the Buzz. Stay for the Innovation.

It's probably cliche to say that Apple did it again but ... er, Apple did it again. What almost seems ubiquitous by now is Apple's innovative product development and design. What often goes unnoticed is that Apple is as solid with their marketing efforts as they are with their product development.

Above is an invitation to last week's event that launched their updated G5 (sweet) and the much-anticipated Video iPod (probably revolutionary). This invitation came out a week before the event foretelling one of their highly touted and very secretive new product releases. What's interesting is that most of us never got this. This was an email invitation to the press only. A few hours later it was all over the internet and wonks like me had to go find this invite and see the magic.

"Magic"? Yes, magic. I'll break down this perfect one-two punch quickly:

1. The message was perfect for the Apple audience. "One more thing ..." (Steve Jobs' signature 'aw shucks new product intro), the Apple logo (branding), and finally the image of the curtain gets talking heads of every size started on the speculation game.

2. The perfect message was combined with the perfect medium to the perfect audience segment. An email message to the media. Only the media, though. Because Apple knows that this targeted group of sneezers (those more likely to spread your ideavirus — see S. Godin for more) was bound to do a majority of the marketing on this message for them.

And that they did. Articles bogged down Google News doing everything from describing the invite to speculating on what the next great new product from Apple was. Plus, do you know how much an email to this focused audience segment probably cost? Next to nothing. And look at the newsday/week Apple got out of this. In a few short hours everyone who needed to know about this event did. Mission accomplished.

The point? When was the last time you hit the nail on the head that squarely (near perfect message, medium, and audience) for the cost of a designer's hour and a modest email campaign?