creative

advertising / android / creative / hp / observatory — 2 Comments
8
Sep 11

Of icons, PCs and the third Apple founder

I’m not quite ready to proclaim a full-blown news crisis — but there’s a serious lack of stories begging for commentary today. I suspect a conspiracy.

Lost iPhone 5? Feels familiar. Carol Bartz getting canned by Yahoo? Boring. Carol Bartz saying naughty words on video? Only slightly less boring.

No, I’m afraid I’ll have to break format today. Some assorted items from the grab bag:

Bad design from Apple?

What's it mean?

It’s always fun to point out that Apple isn’t perfect. Dr. Macenstein offers up Apple’s worst icons, a quick tour of some bad Apple art. My personal least-favorite has always been the icon for iWeb. The doctor is right.

The lost art of code names

Apparently, all the good ones were taken. The next update to Android is code named Ice Cream Sandwich. Further proof that code names are not created in the creative department.

New PCs for HP to dump

It was big news when HP announced they’d be getting rid of their PC group. What better way to celebrate than to announce eight new PC models coming in the next two months. Maybe they’ll dump those for $99 too?

What Apple ads would look like without Apple

It takes some kind of talent to distill something as cool as iPad into a commercial as mediocre as this. But Verizon was up to the task. Stunning. In the old days, Apple had to approve ads from its partners-in-crime. I suspect that rule has been eased.

The Steve Jobs biography meets its match

Ron Wayne, the long-forgotten “third partner” at Apple back at the dawn of time, sold his 10% of the company back to those two other guys for $800. This secures his place in history as the Pete Best of the computer industry. Now Ron has published his own biography called Adventures of an Apple founder. This one doesn’t even bother to start off as a hardcover.

Have a good weekend, all.

apple / creative / observatory / steve jobs — 23 Comments
28
Aug 11

In appreciation of Steve: Think different, remixed

Last week, I noted that if one were to combine the words to Apple’s Crazy Ones ad with historical images of Steve Jobs, it would make perfect sense.

Well, I thought I’d take a crack at it myself.

Here’s my little tribute to Steve. Hope you enjoy.

advertising / creative / observatory — 8 Comments
18
Aug 11

The joy of hordes

I’m a sucker for big ads. I’m talking cast-of-thousands ads. The ones that require a director to be half artist and half general.

I’m enamored of these ads because (1) you can find new details every time you watch, and (2) I’m jealous that I’ve yet to work on one of these things myself. Surely fun is more intense on a grand scale.

My fault. I could just as easily have started a script with “Open on screaming horde of 3,000 running across a field” instead of “Open on couple seated in cafe.” What was I thinking.

Here are four really good cast-of-thousands ads to stir your love of the genre, starting with the new ad from IKEA that inspired this topic.

Not too long ago, Comcast gave us their “Field” commercial. The HD war is over, they said, illustrating the concept by having an army of HD channels overrun the old-school, boring businessmen of the satellite world.

I featured this crazy horde ad for the Motorola Cliq phone when it first appeared, but bring it back because it fits today’s topic. It’s filled with cast-of-thousands goodness.

The grand-daddy of them all is the following ad from Carlton. They not only had fun making The Big Ad, they ridicule the idea of making a big ad in the first place. I give this ad my highest rating partly because I love it and partly because Brits are funnier than we are. (Update 8:55pm, 8/17: Oops. My mistake. Carlton Draught is Australian, and so is the agency that created the ad. So the Americans get pushed down one more notch on the humor scale.)

My life goal remains unchanged: if I can’t write one of these spots one day, I would at least like to be cast in one. I’m sure I could wear funny clothes and stumble on cue.

advertising / creative / microsoft / observatory — 5 Comments
4
Aug 11

Microsoft’s “PCs for Dummies” campaign

Oh, you devilish marketers at Microsoft. I see the game you play.

You zig when other companies zag. They try to win by making customers feel smarter — but you’re going to win by treating them like idiots. Clever!

Back in May, I put up an article poking fun at what was then the newest Microsoft ad. It featured a rather dim customer whose home is turned into a PC store, exposing her to today’s amazing choices in PCs. Her big discovery: “So there’s no more tower? Wow!”

It was such a shallow spot, I never really imagined it would blossom into a whole campaign. But since then, a number of these things have popped up, each featuring someone you’d never want to be, learning something you don’t need to learn: new PCs are better than old ones.

I’m stirred to action only because this new one seems to be getting a lot of air play of late.

In this ad, we meet Cheryl, apparently the victim of a break-in. A gang has built a PC store in her home without her permission. (Unlike the original  spot, there’s no spouse in on the surprise here — it’s just a home invasion.) Cheryl too is a bit on the dim side: “Where’s the tower for this?” she asks. Heh heh. That one never gets old.

Where I come from, agency people get into fights about these things. Some believe it’s important to do a smart ad vs. one that appeals to the lowest common denominator. They believe in building brands vs. going after the low-hanging fruit.

Unfortunately, when you aim for fruit that’s hanging this low, you look pretty silly to customers who are a heck of a lot smarter. Which is probably 98% of them.

To see more people you can’t relate to, view more ads in this campaign here and here.

advertising / creative / iPhone / observatory — 6 Comments
12
Jul 11

Apple tries on a business suit

Apple always had this nagging little problem getting computers into the corporate world: the IT guys were ready to shoot Macs on sight.

Happily, the Mac’s business woes are mattering less these days, mostly because the real fun is happening in mobile.

With iPhone and iPad, Apple isn’t quite as taboo anymore. Though IT guys still resist, a revolution is a hard thing to stop. It also helps when the CEO sends over a note saying, “I want an iPhone right now.”

Combine this with the fact that BlackBerry is doing a fabulous job of self-combusting, and Apple has all kinds of good business prospects. Which makes this the perfect time for them to start fanning the flames of discontent.

Personally, I don’t read The Economist. I get too depressed when I think about money. But someone over at MacRumors does — and spotted this iPhone ad on the back page.

And this gives me the opportunity to do something I don’t think I’ve ever done in this blog: review a print ad from Apple.

Headline:
Business-savvy.
Copy:
iPhone loves business. With over 425,000 apps, the best phone for apps just keeps getting better.

There’s no mention of IT’s old objections to iPhone here. It’s all apps, all the time. So this ad appears to be designed to seduce those who don’t answer to IT, and to dial up the pressure on IT by feeding the groundswell of iPhone requests.

Apple has a web page devoted to the business market, where it deals with all the standard business arguments: security, Microsoft Exchange compatibility, remote locking/wiping, etc. But this ad references neither those features nor the URL.

That aside, is the ad any good? Well, it’s not exactly an Apple Hall-of-Famer. The best Apple ads get torn out of magazines and taped to office walls. They generate buzz. They make other advertisers wonder why they can’t have ads that good. This ad is more … workmanlike.

In fact, you could replace the iPhone in this ad with an Android phone and it would still make perfect sense. (Especially since, iWork aside, the featured apps appear to be available on Android too.)The only real point of difference is that little number “425,000″ tucked in at the bottom. But then we all know that the number of business apps is far, far less.

When I was a tiny little ad writer many years ago, it was explained to me that when we talked to business readers, we couldn’t be as witty or entertaining, because these guys are serious. I never bought that argument. Neither did Apple.

One reason Apple marketing is so widely admired is that the Apple spirit is alive in every ad, whether it’s aimed at consumers, educators or business people.

Maybe it’s in here somewhere and I just haven’t found it yet…

advertising / creative / dell / observatory / streak — 22 Comments
7
Jul 11

Dell’s perfect train wreck

If nothing else, at least Dell is consistent. Change agencies, change marketing chiefs, change CEOs … the end result is always the same: ads that break new ground for tedium.

This time it was a Herculean effort. This isn’t just a new ad — it’s the culmination of a 10-month journey. Deciding it was time to shake up its marketing effort, Dell conducted an all-out agency search, went through all the presentations and evaluations, selected a new agency for each of their market segments, and finally released the hounds to do their creative magic.

After all that, the first work from the new consumer agency, Canada’s Sid Lee, finally appears.

Maestro, hit the Play button.

My goodness, where do we start.

Dell explains that the theme of this new campaign is More You. This is icing on the cake after they recently introduced their new brand theme line, The power to do more, along with that other theme line, You can tell it’s Dell. One can never be too thin, too rich or have too many theme lines.

In a WSJ article about this campaign, Dell’s chief consumer marketer Paul-Henri Ferrard explains, “We realized it was more important to connect more emotionally with customers.”

Dell’s emotional copy goes basically like this: “It has an HD webcam, killer audio… Get this loaded Inspiron 15R now for only five-ninety-nine ninety-nine, powered by the second-gen Intel Core processor family.” That’s connecting, Dell-style.

The Festival of Emotion continues with the following product visual that remains on the screen for about six seconds:

In still-frame form, you can savor things on this screen that the human eye could never absorb in real time.

I’m disappointed that You can tell it’s Dell isn’t in here, because both of their other theme lines are. Although I probably shouldn’t count The power to do more, because you practically need an electron microscope to read it. This is a tribute to the staying power of the Dell marketing person who insisted that this line be present.

Dell’s own press on this campaign trumpets the campaign theme, More You — yet in this entire spot, those words only appear as a throwaway at the bottom of the product screen.

I will assume that More You is meant to describe how Dell computers make it easier to be you. I can only assume — because there is scant evidence of that in this ad. After the basketball player states that his Dell “helps me try new moves, on and off the court,” all we get is the Goofy Dance and a list of product features.

Trying to decipher the meaning of it all, I’d say that switchable lids are supposed to be the big deal here — though that feature is merely shoehorned in with all the clutter. It would never dawn on Dell to create an ad about one feature alone, as Apple did with the iPad Smart Cover. Better to just cram every possible selling point into an ad.

We are assured that other ads in this campaign will follow. Given the brief synopses that appear in various articles, Dell’s imagination is running wild.

In one spot, a young Dell user explains how technology allows her to “indulge her passion for Justin Bieber.” In another, a grandmother shows how a Dell tablet lets her stay in touch with her grandchildren. Will wonders never cease!

Interestingly, Dell actually claims that this campaign positions them as a “lifestyle” brand. In their dreams, maybe. This ad is simply a moving-image version of what Dell normally does badly — catalog advertising. What we get is an unimaginative image of a person with lots of specs sprinkled about, with the price being given the most prominence. This is Dell’s lifestyle, not the customer’s.

I will say this: it’s a remarkable achievement when the 10-second leader at the start of your ad is more engrossing than the ad itself.

In most companies, ads like this are reason enough to fire someone. Oh, right. They already fired their agency, didn’t they. This is from the new agency. Never mind.

advertising / creative / hp / iPad / observatory / strategy — 8 Comments
5
Jul 11

HP’s off-kilter shot at iPad

Congratulations. You’re a creative guy who just got the biggest break of his career. You’ve been asked to come up with a multimillion-dollar campaign for HP’s iPad-killer, the TouchPad.

Your head hurts from all the celebrating last night. Unfortunately, it’s about to hurt more — because it’ll be pretty darn hard to come up with an idea that will even put a dent in iPad, which virtually owns the market. Especially with a product that exists only because iPad blazed the trail before it.

What to do, what to do…

Trust me, I’m sympathetic to the challenge here. I was once hired to come up with a Sony campaign that would “bring down the iPod.” Somehow iPod survived that massive creative threat.

So the big idea for TouchPad turned out to be a celebrity spokesperson. That’s not a bad idea in itself. Some of the greatest campaigns in ad history have employed the celebrity spokesperson. It’s just that when you go this route, you have to think long and hard about the celebrity you’re choosing.

Is he/she:

1. Compatible with the brand?
2. Appealing to those you’re trying to convince?
3. Capable of presenting the product well?
4. Truly entertaining?
5. Likely to be busted for lewd behavior?

If you don’t have all the right answers, you risk spending a lot of money on a very big zero. Or, worse still, a negative.

HP decided that Russell Brand was the right guy for the job. Not exactly a household name. In fact, when a commercial starts by telling you the guy’s name, it’s a good indication that most people won’t know who the hell he is. Again, not a deal-killer, but something to consider.

Russell is a quirky English personality with some bad-boy behavior in his past, legal and otherwise. Clearly HP is looking to be “edgy.” To me, he seems like an unrefined Ricky Gervais.

And this is the problem. To most, Russell comes across as just plain bizarre — and not all that funny. His humor comes with some awkwardness. When a joke falls flat (which it does often — like the “dental joke” in this spot), it feels like open-mike night down at the comedy club.

What about the content of this ad? Well, that’s problem #2. The product features we see in this ad are supposed to be things that are missing in iPad. However, simply because of the way Russell presents, very little of his demo seems extraordinary. Hardly enough to make one stop lusting for an iPad.

Russell’s most grievous offense comes at the end. That’s when he openly makes a play for his paycheck by reciting a line that sounds like it was written in the marketing department: “My life is like nothing else. So is yours. HP TouchPad. Works like nothing else.” So much for whatever shred of authenticity Russell was supposed to bring to this party.

But let’s look at this ad in context.

Is HP’s approach any better than Motorola’s high-tech, robotic, spec-laden ad for Xoom? I think so. Though the personality they’ve chosen is questionable, at least the ad has a personality. Will it turn TouchPad into a serious iPad threat? Don’t hold your breath.

(This ad appears to be the launch spot of the HP TouchPad campaign. See a bunch of other spots in this campaign strung together here.)

advertising / creative / iPhone / observatory / technology / windows phone 7 — 8 Comments
28
Jun 11

Jony Ive’s long-lost brother

Meet Marko Ahtisaari, fraternal twin of Jony Ive.

Interestingly, though Marko and Jony were separated at birth, Marko ended up working in the same line of business. He’s Senior VP of Design at Nokia, responsible for that company’s new N9 smartphone. DNA is a powerful thing.

But it gets even more interesting.

It turns out that everyone in Apple’s creative department has a twin sibling — and they all work at Nokia. That would include the launch video writer, the director and the entire video production crew…

It is absolutely true that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In the world of global commerce, however, it’s also a big, lazy ripoff.

It’s just not possible to create a video so uncannily similar to Apple’s unless you set out with the specific goal of duplicating their work. (With the obvious motive of trying to duplicate their success.)

We should keep in mind that this is the sad work of Nokia’s marketing department, not their engineering department. However, the guys who designed and built the N9 aren’t off the hook yet.

It was last April when Nokia announced their new partnership with Microsoft, which was to result in Windows Phone 7 replacing their Symbian and MeeGo OSes. Yet the N9 is a major new phone from Nokia — still running MeeGo.

A high-stakes double-cross? Playing both sides of the street? Or just a ploy to thoroughly confuse the investment community?

Whatever, all of the above shows that Nokia is one company who has much to learn about sending a simple message. Or an original one.

[Thanks, cbee, for the tip.]

apple news / creative / iMac / observatory / steve jobs — No Comments
23
Jun 11

Sean Connery vs. Steve Jobs: post-game wrap-up

I don’t usually talk about Scoopertino over here. That’s just for fun, whereas this blog is devoted to matters of supreme galactic importance.

However, this week Scoopertino hit some kind of weird global nerve that’s worthy of a mention — since it says something interesting about human nature and reveals interesting attitudes toward Steve Jobs.

In case you’re not familiar, this week’s Scoopertino story was about Steve Jobs trying to recruit Sean Connery for an iMac ad in 1998 — and Connery replying with a blistering letter of rejection. Within hours, Connery’s imaginary dissing of Steve Jobs became a top worldwide trend on Twitter, getting more tweets than Wimbledon. From there it became a story in The Telegraph, Washington Post, Huffington Post and many more.

Most eye-opening, though, were the thousands of comments that appeared in all these places.

First and foremost, they reveal how easy it is to fool people. Keep in mind, this was not a “hoax” as it came to be described. It was a joke put up on a fake news site that’s clearly labeled as a fake news site.

It was when people started to spread the Connery letter alone, out of context, that things got out of hand. This also doesn’t speak too well for humankind’s perceptual abilities, since this letter was literally filled with language and visuals that were dead giveaways.

Second, a great number of commenters were clearly hoping and praying that the story was true. They were totally high on the idea that someone would so rudely put Steve Jobs in his place. Some proclaimed that their admiration for Sean Connery just reached a new high. And when they found out the whole thing was fiction, many said that they wished it were true.

Yikes. A little pent-up hostility there?

What makes Scoopertino fun (we hope) is that it exaggerates reality. Honestly, we never imagined anyone might actually want to live in that reality.

Well, the joke’s over now. Everything’s back to normal. James Bond has no hard feelings. But I did hear that Q is livid that Apple stole his whole iPhone idea…

advertising / apple / apple news / creative / dell / iPad / observatory — 11 Comments
20
Jun 11

Apple’s new high vs. Dell’s new low

If anyone ever questioned the value of creativity in marketing, Apple and Dell are currently staging a public demonstration.

Scratch that — it’s actually more of a public debate.

With its new iPad ad, Apple argues that creativity can make a message more interesting and important. With the first ad in its new brand campaign, Dell takes the position that creativity is an unnecessary frill.

Here’s a quick look at two efforts that live on opposite ends of the creative spectrum.

A BEAUTIFULLY SIMPLE MESSAGE

Since Mac vs. PC ended, I haven’t fawned over too many Apple ads. What kind of fanboy am I? Well, we needn’t dwell on that now. This ad is Apple’s best in recent memory.

In fact, this is one of those ads that makes me jealous. It doesn’t try to be clever, it just is. It makes the point that iPad represents a sea change in computing without feeling self-important. And, miracle of miracles, it does all of this without using the words magical or revolutionary.

Against visuals of iPads doing various things in the hands of different people, Mr. Voiceover sums up what makes iPad so darn interesting:

“Now we can watch a newspaper, listen to a magazine, curl up with a movie, and see a phone call … [and more] … because now there’s this.”

Many tech companies fail to grasp that simple, everyday speech can be the most intelligent way to present a product. Here, Apple describes iPad using the most ordinary words, but combines them in a way that feels totally fresh — and important.

This spot is actually a continuation of two previous iPad ads, both of which were more lofty presentations of Apple’s philosophy. In this spot, Apple does not stand up to proclaim “we believe…” (which can come off as arrogant to some). It simply describes how iPad changes the way you look at the world.

This is the toughest kind of copy to write — unpretentious, intelligent and compelling. Whoever is responsible should take a very big bow. This ad fits well with the best in Apple history.

A PERFECT STORM OF NOTHINGNESS

When Hollywood directors could no longer bear the thought of being associated with a film, they used to cleanse themselves by giving the director’s credit to the imaginary Alan Smithee.

From the first glimpse of Dell’s new $80 million campaign, this could well end up being the first marketing effort ever credited to Mr. Smithee.

The ad you see here was featured in a recent Advertising Age fluff piece, accompanied by quotes from Dell’s chief marketing person. So I can only assume it’s for real — even though it looks and feels like a placeholder awaiting real photography. And a real designer. And a real writer. And a real strategy.

This ad is significant because it marks the beginning of what is supposed to be Dell’s first-ever brand campaign. It’s meant to provide the big, overarching message for individual product ads yet to come.

In other words, it is supposed to be to Dell what Think different was to Apple. I’ll go out on a limb and predict it won’t have quite the same impact.

The only positive thing one can say about this campaign is that it will provide income for stock photo sites specializing in hackneyed people shots.

There are a total of 34 words in this ad. 15 of them — almost half — are the same five words, repeated three times. The power to do more serves as headline, theme line and last line of copy.

Why pound these words into our thick skulls? Perhaps it’s to distinguish Dell’s use of The power to do more from all the others who are using it — including Norlift Fork Lifts, Belkin High-Performance Routers,  Lenovo Docking Solutions, GE Healthcare, Kensington iPad Batteries and who knows how many others. (The 5.6 million Google results for this line were making me groggy.) This is originality, Dell-style.

And it’s not like the remaining 19 words are jewels either. In Dell’s world, boring words fit like a comfortable shoe:

With a range of solutions in cloud computing, interactive learning, healthcare, efficient IT and global services, Dell gives you…

Basically, Dell is saying that what sets them apart is that they churn out a boatload of stuff. So they choose to deliver an undistinguished message built upon an overused theme.

Makes you want to run right out and buy a Dell, doesn’t it?

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