[Moogs]

We Go is the winner of the super bowl ads by a country mile, which shows you generally how bad super bowl ads are. I didn't get a good belly laugh out of a single one of those ads.

Also that ad where they put the cheetah in the race against the car and then the Cheetah turns around and mauls the guy... THAT was an original concept. More of that, fewer $10K hookers enticing you to buy cars, flowers, etc.

[Moogs]

Originally Posted by Chinney Listen to the Moogs. He sees clearly.

Uhthankyousuh!

Originally Posted by turtle I might succumb to this. I happen to enjoy most hockey games I watch.

Very nice. I'll except your application for next year's fantasy league by August 1.

[torifile]

Funny that you should mention that cheetah ad - it had my 5 year-old son in stitches. I'm not sure why. I think he was just drunk on the novelty of being able to *watch* commercials since we always skip them and that was one of the first he saw. Still, it's good to see things through a child's eyes when we are so jaded ourselves.

[addabox]

Originally Posted by Robo I tweeted about it, but was I the only one who was really weirded out by the Samsung ad? It was just so...bad. I'm not criticizing Samsung's ad for not being true, because (shocker!) ads often aren't. But good ads ring true. The less bullshit the better, but if you have bullshit it at the very least can't smell like bullshit. And that whole series of ads with the line-waiters smells like bullshit. Even ignoring cringe-worthy contrived lines like "we just got Samsunged," the whole premise just feels off. Samsung's trying to have it both ways; they're poking fun at line-waiters for being sheep while also suggesting that they want to be freed by whatever phone Samsung's pushing that week. But these messages are self-contradictory; nobody waits in line for a product they're eager to escape. So the whole thing smells like bullshit. It's true that I think Samsung's products are substandard, but that's not what I'm talking about here. It's just that the advertising sucks. Instead of having some dude go "Is that a PEN?" and then having everybody shout "Freedom!" and fleeing the Apple Store, maybe they could just, idunno, show us why a pen might be useful? I'm in the Steve Jobs if-you-see-a-stylus-they-blew-it camp, but not everybody is. And if they built a pen into their product, they obviously think that it's useful, right? They didn't just put it their to have a pointless differentiator from the glut of other identical handsets, right? Valentine's Day is approaching. They could show people exchanging sweet handwritten notes. Hell, it's still winter; they could show people using the pen to use their phone while wearing gloves. Either of those could make for an effective ad! Instead, they chose bullshit. It's just weird how so many Android ads — Samsung's ads, last year's Xoom ads — go for the "it's not Apple!" angle instead of, y'know, selling the product. Even BlackBerry seems to be getting into the weirdly negative ad game, with their recent round of "We need tools, not toys!" ads. It reminds me of the iPod era, where so many MP3 player companies marketed to the too-hip-for-anything-popular, anything-but-iPod crowd because that was all they could reach. The difference is, the iPhone doesn't have iPod-style market share (yet). And it's weird seeing Android fans crowing about how Android is winning the market share battle and becoming the OS for the masses while simultaneously deriding Apple users as sheep who are just following the crowd. Woo, tangent.

Spot on. I've noticed an increase of these kinds of ads-- ads that go to great lengths to pretend that some bizarro version of the world is in play, one that deeply flatters the product at hand.

For instance, those fucked up Droid ads that would have the iPhone cast as a "porcelain princess" (or whatever nonsense they were pushing), apparently banking on some kind of homophobia/machismo/insane demographic that would connect with the idea that the iPhone was gay. That would be objectionable, of course, even if the product were tricked out like a tranny on meth, but in the case of the iPhone it simply made no sense. Thus, the only possible takeaway was "Gee, the Droid people might be losing it." I remember at the time a few people tried to argue that there was some kind of "how people actually feel" deal that the ad successfully tapped into, but that's basically like claiming the iPad would fail because no one would ever stop thinking about feminine hygiene products-- i.e. simply an expression of juvenile sensibilities seeking to portray itself as normative.

Or the Microsoft "Really?!" spots for WP 7. The idea was that people were apparently engrossed in their phones because it was so hard to launch an app, and if only they had a way to see some info without launching an app then everyone would happily "glance and go" and be quit of the terrible tyranny of, you know, texting and looking at maps and web pages at length because either people like to do that or because some information requires sustained scrutiny. The campaign made no sense because in the real world "glance-able" information either isn't difficult to acquire or is insufficient for the task at hand, and in either case a quick peak at a calendar entry or email is not why people are walking around staring at their phones. It's making a big point of differentiation out of a problem no one has.

In both of the above cases people argued that the ads were nevertheless successful either because they were clever, or memorable or both (ala the old "Hey, we're talking about it on line, they must be doing something right"). Given the fortunes of WP7 and Motorola to date I think we can agree that whatever else these ads were, they weren't very helpful moving product.

And, as you say, this completely off the rails Samsung campaign, which is being defended for the same old reasons-- memorable, buzz creating, clever, funny. But none of those things are helpful if the central conceit isn't congruent with most people's general ideas about the world. HTC isn't going to make much headway implying that Samsung is a military dictatorship that sells phones to violence prone jarheads, because that makes no sense. I don't care how much production value, imagination, wit and style they put into that message, it's DOA.

The idea that there's some encumbrance involved with buying an iPhone that involves lines and ignorance makes no sense. The only world where it even has a trace of resonance is amongst hardcore Apple haters, who would laugh hard if you showed Apple customers being buried in shit while Android users prance about shooting off bottle rockets. Not much of a touchstone for proportionate critiques, in other words.

In Samsung's case, as I've said elsewhere, I think they've gone pretty much batshit insane, so I look forward to increasingly bewilderingly bitter celebrations of how Samsung is the New Everything and Apple are fucking swine oh my god they should die horribly, die die die. I don't think it's going to particularly add to their fortunes, but it will be hugely entertaining.

They need to be a little bit careful, though, because at some point the lasting impression isn't going to be "Samsung liberates wretched iPhone slaves" but rather "Samsung is nuts."

[RowdyScot]

Considering how Samsung did little more than make picture frames for their TV lines this past year, I think they really are nuts. Now their ads are reflecting what was suspected.

[Moogs]

Apparently Samsung was making fun of Apple last night...

http://www.macrumors.com/2012/02/05/...super-bowl-ad/

...and they did such a shitty job of it I wasn't even aware that it was supposed to be a poke at Apple. All I could think was "why would I want to buy a phone from samsung that requires a stylus... wtf good would a stylus do me on a phone... I had one of those in 2002, it was called a Clie."



If you're going to make fun of a competitor make it obvious you're doing so, rather than filling your add full of convoluted images and messages.

[addabox]

Originally Posted by Moogs Apparently Samsung was making fun of Apple last night... http://www.macrumors.com/2012/02/05/...super-bowl-ad/ ...and they did such a shitty job of it I wasn't even aware that it was supposed to be a poke at Apple. All I could think was "why would I want to buy a phone from samsung that requires a stylus... wtf good would a stylus do me on a phone... I had one of those in 2002, it was called a Clie." If you're going to make fun of a competitor make it obvious you're doing so, rather than filling your add full of convoluted images and messages.

I think the message is pretty clear: purchasing Apple products is a horrible, dreary burden that saps the will to live, whereas purchasing Samsung products is orgasmic street party of freedom.

It's just that this message is completely bonkers. It's like some kind of weird projection from the Samsung corporate offices, wherein animosity born of competition and litigation is imagined to be percolating through the buying public.

I look forward to the ad where the iPhone's potential buyers are stuck in court, sweating it out during cross-examination, and Samsung bursts in and guns down the jury.

[709]

I got that they were jabbing at Apple users waiting in line, but when I saw the product they were pushing, I swear to god I thought they were trying to go after the iPad market. Like, the iPad is too big and you should want want a mini-tablet. Never once did it cross my mind that it was was supposed to be a phone. Who carries a phone that big? Who has pockets that big?

Admittedly, I wasn't paying too much attention, but I don't remember them ever holding the mini-tablet up to an ear. Then I maybe would've got it.

And then would've been wtf? A mini-iPad-phone wat?

[billybobsky]

"It comes with a pen!"

Now that's a meme.

[psmith2.0]

Originally Posted by addabox I think the message is pretty clear: purchasing Apple products is a horrible, dreary burden that saps the will to live, whereas purchasing Samsung products is orgasmic street party of freedom. It's just that this message is completely bonkers. It's like some kind of weird projection from the Samsung corporate offices, wherein animosity born of competition and litigation is imagined to be percolating through the buying public. I look forward to the ad where the iPhone's potential buyers are stuck in court, sweating it out during cross-examination, and Samsung bursts in and guns down the jury.

[Moogs]

Originally Posted by billybobsky "It comes with a pen!" Now that's a meme.

QFT.

[eventhorizon]

I'm just confused as to how anyone looks at that Chrysler ad with Clint Eastwood and complains. Since when has encouraging optimism, perseverance, and togetherness become partisan hackery?

[Noel]

Because Obama made Hope itself a lib'rul thing.

[torifile]

A wide woman once said "all the critics find great meaning in the telephone books". I thought it was a great ad and not partisan at all.

I read some on the lefty sites I frequent as the ad being a denunciation of union rights because the signs from the Wisconsin protests (@ the 50 second mark) were airbrushed out and it came after the line about division and anger or something.

Gimme a break. It was about Chrysler being happy they survived and letting everyone feel proud a big American automaker made it through this awful economy.

[psmith2.0]

I just saw a neat, somewhat sappy (did Michael Bay direct it? ) commercial with one of my favorite actors. It didn't hit me as "political" at all. It hit me as "that's nice to hear someone say...even if it'll probably get all twisted around and made into hay by those - both sides - who live for that shit."

Yep.



To me, it was just "general inspiration". I wish more stuff was made here, or that some of the industries and ways we've lost weren't gone. But that's pissing in the wind, huh?