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Robo
Formerly Roboman, still
awesome
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Portland, OR
 
2006-07-12, 14:53

Quote:
Originally Posted by pscates2.0
Overrated and geekily sentimentalized.

[ducks behind something bullet/flame-proof, prays for safety and deliverance]

This might surprise you, but...I feel the same way.

The 1984 "non-commerical" is rather ordinary now, but I'm sure when it first aired, it was quite a coup. "Ahead of it's time," and all that.

Older commercials were much more direct in conveying the benefits of the product advertised (the earliest commercials, comically so). You didn't have artsy ads back then. You couldn't just show a sleek car driving in slow-mo, even. You had to talk, in the requisite nasally voice, about all the benefits of said car - how much your family would enjoy the weekend drives, and all that.

Contrast that to today. The biggest buzzword in advertising today is "viral marketing" - getting people to talk about the ad itself, in hopes of building buzz for the product it advertised. BK's "Subservient Chicken" campaign didn't tell you how much better the Whopper was compared to a Big Mac - it just got a lot of people thinking about BK. The (in)famous "ilovebees" campaign for Halo 2 didn't talk about all the new features Halo 2 would have - it just got a lot of people participating in this "alternate reality game," which, in theory, would make them more excited for the game (the ending of the campaign).

That's why I don't think merely remaking the 1984 ad would work. Artsy ads are everywhere. The 1984 ad is more esoteric than, say, an Infiniti ad, but it's not as incredibly groundbreaking as it once was. That's why I would take it a few steps further in its current direction - I'd make it even more cinematic, by giving it a plot that continued through several ads. I'd make it even more of a non-ad, by ending each part without so much as an Apple logo (until, of course, the end). And yes, Pscates, I'd even appeal to that "geeky sentimentalization" by throwing in subtle clues that it is a Mac ad. (You know, naming the rescue team "Leopard" or whatever 2009's Mac OS is called, stuff like that.)

and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong
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