Just when I thought I was losing my ability to love, comes this spot for Motorola’s new smartphone, the Cliq. Or is it the “Motorola Cliq with Motoblur”? Well, no matter how many syllables they throw my way, I’m sticking to my guns: I love this commercial.
The Cliq’s special power is that it merges contact lists, photos and social networking — Facebook, MySpace and Twitter — into one visual display. Not a bad concept for a phone. And a terrifically good concept for an ad.
In this spot, our hero stands alone in a desolate landscape with his Cliq. We then see his entire, mad, out-of-control world of contacts rushing to meet him — while he’s able to focus on the one contact he’s most interested in at the moment. The girl.
The idea is simple. But everyone who’s tried to turn a simple idea into something special knows how impossible it can be. In this case, they did everything perfectly. The acting is understated and natural. No one tries too hard (except for the wild hordes, but that’s what hordes are supposed to do). The girl gets one damn word, and it’s one of the most charming bits of dialog I’ve ever seen. It’s all in the body language.
But most of the magic is in the production. This could have been filmed a hundred different ways: in a different landscape, with different kinds of people, with different degrees of energy. And the editing could have gone a hundred ways as well. What we get is a frantic cast of thousands, dangerously fun action, with truly hilarious choices in depicting our hero’s “social network.” There’s an artful balance of high energy and dead quiet.
And, lest we forget, every bit of this action is devoted to delivering on the concept. Cliq’s reason for being is hard to miss.
Now let’s return to reality. iPhone became a juggernaut because it raised the bar by an order of magnitude. It’s hard to imagine any company outdoing iPhone by the same margin anytime soon. So the immediate goal is to simply take some wind out of iPhone’s sails. It’s too early to tell if Cliq is the phone to do that, or if future ads will be as good as this one. But I can’t watch this spot enough times. A big thank-you to everyone involved. (If anyone has the credits, please let me know.)
Tags: ken segall, motoblur, motorola, motorola cliq
