Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll probably tell you I’m a pathological Apple fan… and they’d be absolutely right.

But don’t worry — I’m not going to talk about ultra-thin laptops, quasi-divine phones, or big cats. Others are better placed for that and do it far better than I could.

Today I want to talk about marketing — yes, really — specifically about Apple’s below-the-line marketing on the web. What does he know about marketing?, you might ask. Not that much, honestly, but my obsessive-compulsive fixation with everything that comes out of Cupertino, California, somewhat makes up for it. Let’s begin.

I’ve been closely following Apple’s commercial moves for a couple of years now, and I’ve noticed some details that have caught my attention powerfully. My interest has been reignited by the fact that — at around 6pm Spanish time today — the biggest Apple event of the year is taking place: Steve Jobs’ keynote at Macworld 2008 (something like New Year’s Day for Mac users) and, as usual, it’s already generating a massive buzz on the internet.

And that’s exactly where I wanted to get to: Coincidence? I very much doubt it.

Before diving in, I want to briefly explain what an Apple event actually means — it’s not a standard product launch, it’s a genuine spectacle, meticulously prepared, with its own marketing campaign behind it and a superstar at the centre.

As an analogy: if Apple were a TV soap opera, a Macworld would be the episode where we find out the beloved main couple are actually siblings.

The impact of an event like this can send the company’s stock soaring (or crashing, if what’s announced falls short of expectations), trigger an avalanche of online purchases rivalling the opening day of the sales, and even get the Spanish press talking about it.

Traditionally, during the weeks leading up to a major Apple event (Macworld, WWDC, Apple Expo…), mysterious rumours appear online in the form of small snippets of vague, imprecise information, which mysteriously relate to other rumours that surfaced during, let’s say, the “off-season”.

Simultaneously, Apple launches its official pre-keynote campaign, revealing that year’s tagline through a series of banners hung at the convention centre, which eager bloggers quickly photograph and publish on their respective sites. Some are nods to the competition (which later turn out to be prophetic), others have an epic feel, and others, like this year’s, are mysterious and intriguing.

And that’s really all it takes for the zombie army the enthusiastic fans that Apple has as customers to start doing their thing. Some, armed with Photoshop, create mock-ups of the products from their wildest fantasies. Others try to sneak in fakes as screenshots or stolen photos. Some innocently write about it on their blogs (who, me?), and others spread false rumours with, shall we say… various agendas (but that’s another story).

That said, things don’t always go as planned — sometimes the Hype alone isn’t enough and slightly less “subtle” tactics are needed. A giant banner might appear on Apple’s homepage, mysterious domain names get registered, or leaked images of a new keyboard or iPod surface…

When the big day finally arrives, all this manufactured excitement combines with Steve Jobs’s legendary Reality Distortion Field during his presentation, which hits the internet like an atomic bomb.

But as if that weren’t enough, once the show is over, Apple updates its website with every scrap of information you could want about the new gadget(s) — giant photos, demo videos, and yes, you can already buy it!

From that point it’s only a matter of minutes before videos of the TV spot appear on YouTube, tech blogs dissect every last detail, microblogging services talk of nothing else, and there are even livecasts covering the purchase, unboxing, and first impressions of the new device.

Oh, you don’t believe me? Drop by any of these sites between 6 and 8pm tonight and see for yourself:

• Most searched on Technorati, a blog search engine.
• Most searched on Google.
• Twitter’s public timeline, the internet’s most popular microblogging network.
• Gizmodo and Engadget, 2 of the most-visited tech blogs.
• The front page of Digg, the web’s leading social news site.

Now think about it — why pay a fortune for a 20-second spot during the Super Bowl halftime show when you can have tens of thousands of people simultaneously raving about your new product for a fraction of the price?

In my view, Apple has invented Buzz Marketing 2.0, and if it’s managed to double its stock value in the past year, it must be working.