When I was young, I used to cringe when adults made clumsy, if well-intentioned, attempts to speak in what they thought was “youthful slang” in order to make a connection with us.
Now that I’m one of those adults, I can’t tell for sure whether the message in this poster (which I saw in the Toronto subway yesterday) comes across to today’s net/text-speaking youth as clever or clumsy. I’m torn – should my reaction be LOL or WTF?
(And is it me, or does the expression on the guy’s face say BRB?)
Alternate titles for this ad: 150 Receding Hairlines! 150 Giant Foreheads!
Click the ad to see it at full size.
Here’s the text of the ad:
150 Extra Engineers
An IBM Electronic Calculator speeds through thousands of intricate computations so quickly that on many complex problems it’s like having 150 EXTRA Engineers.
No longer must valuable engineering personnel…now in critical shortage…spend priceless creative time at routine repetitive figuring.
Thousands of IBM Electronic Business Machines…vital to our nation’s defense…are at work for science, industry and the armed forces, in laboratories, factories and offices, helping to meet urgent demands for greater production.
From roughly the same time as the Honeywell “What the Heck is Electronic Mail?” advertisement I showed you earlier, comes this Apple ad for the original Apple ][ computer. You have to remember that this was a time when most people didn’t have a computer at their desk; in fact, if an office had a computer, it had just one. And the desktop computers of that era had far less processor power (they typically has 1 MHz 8-bit chips like the Z80 or 6502) and RAM (maximum address space was 64K; machines typically maxed out at 48K RAM) than even the cheapest of today’s mobile phones. And yes, that’s a standard TV set being used as a monitor – its highest resolution was 280 by 192 pixels.
The tricky part about creating such an ad is trying to convince people of that era that they needed a computer. Remember, in those days computers were relegated to their own rooms, the fax machine was still new, mobile phones were toys for the rich and were carried in their own briefcases and when office and even legal documents were typed or written out in longhand. I’ve been trying to think of a present-day analogue for a late 1970s/early 1980s computer ad, but I’m drawing a blank.
Here’s the text of the ad:
What kind of man owns his own computer?
Rather revolutionary, the whole idea of owning your own computer? Not if you’re a diplomat, printer, scientist, inventor…or a kite designer, too. Today there’s Apple Computer. It’s designed to be a personal computer. To uncomplicate your life. And make you more effective.
It’s a wise man who owns an Apple.
If your time means money, Apple can help you make more of it. In an age of specialists, the most successful specialists stay away from uncreative drudgery. That’s where Apple comes in.
Apple is a real computer, right to the core. So just like big computers, it manages data, crunches numbers and prints reports. You concentrate on what you do best. And let Apple do the rest. Apple makes that easy with three programming languages – including Pascal – that let you be your own software expert.
Apple, the computer worth not waiting for
Time waiting for access to your company’s big mainframe is time wasted. What you need in your department – on yourdesk – is a computer that answers only to you…Apple Computer. It’s less expensive than timesharing. More dependable than distributed processing. Far more flexible than centralized EDP. And, at less than $2500 (as shown), downright affordable.
Visit your local computer store
You can join the personal computer revolution by visiting the Apple dealer in your neighborhood. We’ll give you his name when you call our toll-free number…
First, there was Lauren, and now we have Giampaolo. The ad follows the same “You Find It, You Keep It” formula: someone gets a set budget to buy a new computer and they get to keep any money left over after the purchase. And of course, he picks the PC:
The first ad featuring Lauren got that minority of people who buy Macs for boosting their self-esteem rather than getting stuff done a little riled up and coming up with laundry lists detailing what’s wrong with the ads, and I suspect that there’ll be more of the same with this one.
I’m impressed that The Empire’s ad agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, came up with another ad that’s neither funny-as-in-strange but nonsensical nor forgettable. It’s also good to a portrayal of a Windows user as attractive, funny and not John “I’m a PC” Hodgman.
<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:0bb6a07c-c829-4562-8375-49e6693810c7&showPlaylist=true&from=shared" target="_new" title="Laptop Hunters $1000 – Lauren Gets an HP Pavilion">Video: Laptop Hunters $1000 – Lauren Gets an HP Pavilion</a>
It’s one of the greatest strengths of the Esteemed Competition; as a long-time Mac and iPod user, I know first-hand the Apple experience is a very satisfying one that creates a lot of passionate users. This passion led to more than the usual number of pagehits and comments for my previous post on the “Lauren” ad (not to mention more than the usual amount of AdSense cash – thanks for the beer money, folks!) as well as a number of huffy articles including:
That’s the term Ed Oswald used in his article. My response: Oh, come on. Imagine the ridiculousness of someone complaining that Apple’s “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” ads were offensive to Windows users. If all you had were those ads to go by, you’d think that Windows machines were completely non-functional (lies!) and its users were uniformly dull accountant-types (bigotry!). Chill, people – good natured-one-upmanship is part of advertising; heck, it’s part of day-to-day life. If this ad is offensive, I suggest you stay indoors, because you’re not going to like the outside world.
That’s how commercials work, you see. By and large, Apple and Microsoft are playing the same game. A game that Apple started, I might add. And kudos to Apple for starting it; it seems to have worked well for them.
But now that a strong response is out by Microsoft (a separate tangential conversation is whether Microsoft should be throwing so much money at a “response” campaign; that’s debatable), the Apple fanboys are restless (this topic was at the top of Techmeme earlier today) and feel the need to point out the “offense,” “pointlessness,” and “inaccuracies.”
Wow. Talk about a classic case of dishing out but not being able to take it.
“But Lauren’s an actress!”
It still doesn’t mean that she’s not someone that the ad agency found through Craigslist, nor does it affect the credibility of the story within the ad. I might as well say “But John Hodgman and Justin Long are actors! They aren’t really computers!”
As I’ve said before, Los Angeles is packed to the rafters with pretty women, whom when you ask them what they do will tell you that they do something that pays the rent and that they also act. Yes, Lauren’s an actress, but she pays the rent with an office manager job. It’s a career path that’s common enough that they make fridge magnets like this:
Contrast this with John “I’m a PC” Hodgman, who pays the bills with his paycheques from Apple, Battlestar Galactica and the Daily Show (there’s also his book deal, but making money off books is a tricky thing) and Justin “I’m a Mac” Long, who pays the bills with his paycheques from Apple, Live Free or Die Hard, Zack and Miri, Pineapple Express and both Alvin and the Chipmunks movies. Nobody with any sense dismisses them because they’re actors – they tell a compelling story well, and that’s the important thing.
Apple Doesn’t Need to Have a Monopoly on Good Ideas
That doesn’t mean that the Esteemed Competition doesn’t make excellent stuff – I know from having owned three Mac laptops and a couple of iPods over the past six years.
<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:0bb6a07c-c829-4562-8375-49e6693810c7&showPlaylist=true&from=msnvideo" target="_new" title="Laptop Hunters $1000 – Lauren Gets an HP Pavilion">Video: Laptop Hunters $1000 – Lauren Gets an HP Pavilion</a>
It works. Instead of featuring famous comedians and techies-turned-philanthropists or framing the ad in terms of Apple’s ads, this one gets it right by featuring a story and a character that the audience can relate to.
In the ad, “Lauren”, a cute young woman, is driving around town, trying to get a 17” laptop that’s fast, has a comfortable keyboard and sells for under $1000. She first goes to the Mac store but finds the only $1000 model is the 13” MacBook. She’d have to double her budget to get a 17” model. There’s a great moment when she sarcastically remarks as she drives that “I’m just not cool enough to be a Mac person”.
(Cue howls of derision from Mac fanboy/pegboy Jon Gruber on Daring Fireball in 3…2…1…)
In the end, she goes to Best Buy and marvels at the selection of laptops that meet her criteria. She finds one and squeaks with delight. The camera zooms in on the cash register’s display, which shows the before-tax price of her laptop: $699.99. When asked how she’s going to pay for it, she looks at the camera and says this with great satisfaction: “Cash”. This is the sort of message that will really hit home for a lot of people, given the state of the economy.
Kudos to Crispin Porter + Bogusky for being clever in making these ads. They put ads on Craigslist and similar sites, offering people between USD$700 and USD$2000 to go buy a new computer. They were told that they could keep any money that was left over, which provided them an incentive to look for the best deals they could get. It’s good countermarketing: if Apple is using actors, go with real people.
(And Apple used real people in the “Switch” ad series – remember the series of ads which included “stoner chick” Ellen Feiss? Maybe Lauren is Microsoft’s Janie Porche.)
I’m interested to see what the other ads in this series – assuming it’s a series – look like.
When I was Tucows’ Technical Evangelist, one of the areas the company was researching was casual gaming and the opportunities it presented. During the research phase, our casual games guy Scott Murff pointed out the difference between the ads on casual and hardcore game sites: while the ads on hardcore game sites were generally about other hardcore games, the ads on casual games sites were aimed at a broader audience, and many were aimed at women.
The next logical step is to take the ads on the page area surrounding casual games and and move them inside casual games, and it’s now possible with AdSense for Games, which makes it possible to insert AdSense advertising into Flash games. Here’s an example provided by the Inside AdSense blog, which shows gameplay and a “and now, a word from our sponsors” moment featuring an AdSense ad (the ad comes on at the 0:53 mark):
For the time being, your casual game will have to be a hit to qualify: it has to have half a million game plays a day and 80% of its traffic must come from the U.S. and U.K.. As with original recipe AdSense, it’s likely that the “long tail” crowd will eventually be admitted if AdSense for Games takes off.
I like Penny Arcade‘s take on the current Seinfeld/Gates TV ads for Windows:
Click the comic to see it on its original page.
My favourite line from the article accompanying the comic: “Trying to associate Microsoft with “fun” is like trying to associate Satan with aromatherapy.” Mind you, I think they managed to pull it off with the XBox 360.
The ad runs for 1 minute and 30 seconds, the first minute of which is devoted to Jerry helping Bill shop for discount shoes. Microsoft or what they promise for the future isn’t mentioned until the 1:02 mark, and the big revelation is that they’re going to make computers moist and chewy like cake. The commercial ends with Bill shaking the junk in his trunk, followed by three cards: “The Future”, “Delicious”, and finally the Windows logo.
My guess is that the purpose of this commercial is to set the tone and flavor of the Gates/Seinfeld relationship for the ones to follow, which presumably will have a little more substance.
Even if you saw yesterday’s post about celebrity tech endorsements, do check it again — I’ve been updating it with more ads for computers and videogames featuring celebrities, and I still have to add a few more.
Here’s an 1970s print ad that seems gallows-humor funny today, considering that there are people itching to attack Iran before they develop nuclear weapons. It features the Shah of Iran as a poster boy for a campaign encouraging more nuclear power plants in the U.S.:
Here’s the text of the ad:
Guess Who’s Building Nuclear Power Plants
The Shah of Iran is sitting on top of the largest reservoirs of oil in the world.
Yet he’s building two nuclear plans and planning two more to provide electricity for his country.
He knows the oil is running out — and time with it.
Be he wouldn’t build the plants now if he doubted their safety. He’d wait. As many Americans want to do.
The Shah knows that nuclear energy is not only economical, it has enjoyed a remarkable 30-year saftey record. A record that was good enough for the citizens of Plymouth, Massachusetts, too. They’ve approved their second nuclear plant by a vote of almost 4 to 1. Which shows you that you don’t have to go as far as Iran for an endorsement of nuclear power.
For more about Iran’s history with nuclear power (and how it intertwines with U.S. foreign policy), see this article at Foreign Policy in Focus.
Hello, Boing Boing readers! (And thanks, Cory!) I’ve added a whole whack of new videos to this entry including John Cleese’s 1980s ads for Compaq, Tom Baker’s ads for Prime Computer, plus celebrity ads for Intel Centrino, Apple, Nintendo DS and more!
What’s Up with That?
By now, you’ve probably heard that Microsoft latest move to counter the incredibly popular “I’m a Mac / I’m a PC” ads was to hireJerrySeinfeldastheirnewpitchman. The new campaign, which is rumored to be based on the slogan “Windows, Not Walls”, is expected to cost US$300 million — $10 million of which is earmarked for Seinfeld — is expected to debut on September 4th. As Jerry would say in his own stand-up routines: “What’s up with that?”
Yes, because if there’s one surefire way to convince everyone Vista is cool, cutting edge and not liable to get frazzled by life’s minor complications, it’s hiring a 1990s sitcom star and professional kvetcher! Who, um, very visibly owned a series of Macs on his show. This is Microsoft’s worst promotional concept since, well, since its last Vista campaign, the Mojave Experiment, which decisively proved that people hate Vista but will use it if they are tricked into thinking it’s something else, like a stable, functional tool. Here’s how Madison Avenue is responding:
“They are not seen as cool,” says Robert Passikoff, president of Brand Keys, a New York branding firm. “Apple is cool. Can anyone even recall a Microsoft ad? No.”
Microsoft’s hiring of a celebrity who peaked back in the 1990s is a perfect metaphor for a two of their biggest problems:
They’re hamstrung by the need to maintain backward compatibility with 1990s applications (Raymond Chen’s blog has the best stories about these issues).
They’re still using their 1990s approach to marketing: throwing a lot of money around.
I expect that Microsoft’s ads will be the exact opposite of Apple’s: instead of two unknown (at least prior to the ads) guys against a plain white background, they’ll feature a celebrity against a glitzy background. Also unlike Apple’s ads, I suspect theirs won’t be all that effective.
To borrow another Seinfeld line: “Good luck with all that.”
Seinfeld in One of the Old “Think Different” Ads
Mark Evans found this old Apple “Think Different” ad — one of those “Here’s to the crazy ones” ads with Richard Dreyfuss doing the voice-over — that features, of all people, a young Jerry Seinfeld.
Seinfeld in an HP Ad
In this HP ad, Seinfeld promotes not just one, but two flops: Windows Vista and Bee Movie:
A Brief History of Celebrity Computer Endorsements
Microsoft’s hire of Seinfeld led me to search for computer and videogame system ads featuring celebrities. Here’s what I found:
Commodore: William Shatner
In the original Star Trek series, Shatner’s character Captain James T. Kirk actually destroyed a number of computers just by talking to them. That’s why I always thought Shatner was an odd choice as Commodore’s pitchman. In the ad below, he’s promoting the Vic-20:
Commodore Amiga: Tommy Lasorda, the Pointer Sisters, NASA Astronauts and Thomas “Tip” O’Neil
This is probably the most celebrity-laden ad I’ve ever seen for a computer, the woefully under-appreciated Commodore Amiga:
Bill Cosby: Texas Instruments TI 99/4
Here’s Bill Cosby, who was the spokesperson for Texas Instrument’s incredibly lame TI 99/4:
George Plimpton: Mattel Intellivision
Bak in the early 1980s, we had the first console war: the Atari VCS (later renamed the Atari 2600) versus Mattel Intellivision. Atari had an unknown — a nerdy blond kid with big glasses — as their spokesperson. Mattel went with a celebrity: George Plimpton.
While the Intellivision’s better graphics and sound made it a much better console for sports games, Atari had the far better gameplay, especially for arcade games. Star Strike, which Plimpton hawks in the video below, was far less fun than Asteroids, even if it featured “the total destruction of a planet”:
Finally, here’s an Plimpton ad that gets downright creepy at the end. It features Henry Thomas (he played “Elliott” in E. T. and was a big star at the time), who’s about to make the classic “Oh, let’s get in the playground candyman’s van…he seems legit!” mistake…
Matthew Perry and Jennifer Aniston: Windows 95 Training
Although this isn’t an ad but a training video, it’s still got considerable late-’90s star power in the form of Matthew Perry and Jennifer Aniston from Friends. This features the painful line: “Taskbar? Is that like a Snickers bar?”
Here’s part one:
and here’s part two:
Hewlett-Packard’s Ads
And finally, celebrity ads for half-decent computers (I’ve generally had good experiences with HP machines, and not just the printers).
Back in the early 1980s, Compaq was synonymous with “portable computer”. I remember being stunned that you could actually carry a computer around! I also remember being stunned that John Cleese was doing ads for them.
Here’s Cleese asking the most important question about portable computers: “Does it have a handle?”
“We don’t need a portable. We have Bruno”:
This one’s an ad for the Compaq III that was only shown in the U.K.:
This one targets “that trendy computer” — the original Macintosh. Guess which company is still around?
In which he compares the Portable II to a fish:
Forget about our earlier commercials about portable computers, we make desktops now!
In case you’re not sure how to spell “Compaq”:
“How could a computer be made from three hundred and eighty six chips and 32 bits from a bus?”
The “Trust the well known name” ad is very Pythonesque:
Here’s one for the Compaq DeskPro: “70 megabytes. 8 mega-hertz. Two hundred and eighty-six chips. Dual-mode monitor.”
Here’s another one where he uses the “three hundred and eighty six chips and 32 bits of a bus” line:
“The decision stank”:
“I need a vaction!”
“Three cheers for it!”
Again with “three hundred and eighty six chips and 32 bits of a bus” gag:
He wants 1 million pounds in ransom from IBM:
This one plays on the old adage “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM”:
In this one, he’s talking about the new Compaq plant in Glasgow:
And finally, an internal promo video for Compaq UK’s dealers:
Intel Centrino: John Cleese, Tony Hawk and Seal
It could be the opening line to a joke: “John Cleese, Tony Hawk and Seal walk into a commercial…”
Prime Computer: Tom “Doctor Who” Baker
Tom Baker played one of my favorite incarnations of Doctor Who; he also shilled for Prime Computer. Here he is with Lalla Ward, who played “Romana” on Doctor Who:
Apple
Here’s an old one for the Lisa (the predecessor to the Mac) featuring Kevin Costner:
Apple’s had a few celebrities in recent ads. Here’s an “I’m a Mac / I’m a PC” one with Gisele Bundchen:
This one features Judy Greer as the cute-but-unstable yoga instructor:
I think HAL 9000 is enough of a celebrity to count, don’t you?
Nintendo DS
Why is Captain Picard Starfleet’s greatest strategist? Because of Nintendo brain training! Here’s Patrick Stewart and Julie Walters with a DS:
Microsoft UK: Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant (The Office, the UK Version)
Here’s a four-parter featuring Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant in their The Office characters starring in a Microsoft UK training video titled The Office Values:
IBM: Avery Brooks
We’ve had Kirk and Picard…why not Sisko? Here’s Avery Brooks’ ads for IBM. The “Where are the Flying Cars?” ad struck a chord with a number of friends:
Here’s another one, “Epiphany”:
And here’s one on Linux:
Atari “XL” Series Computers
In those “pre-internet” days, there were considerably fewer uses for computers. As a result, there semmed to be many more ads for the computer as an educational tool than today. Here’s Alan Alda talking about how his Atari XL computer is teaching him Italian:
Here’s one demonstrating Typing Attack, a videogame that teaches touch typing. There were a number of apps like that back then:
Here’s an ad featuring “Atari Writer”, Atari’s word processing package. You have to keep in mind that at this point in time, many people still used typewriters:
IBM: The Cast of M*A*S*H
Alan Alda didn’t just do ads for Atari, he also appeared in an IBM commercial, and so did some of his castmates from M*A*S*H. The video below features two ads: Jamie Farr is in the ad for the PS/2 series of computers, and Alan Alda, Harry Morgan and Gary Burghoff are in the ad for the AS/400 series.
An intentionally bad promo that parodies 1980s ads for game systems like the Atari 2600, Intellivision and Colecovision?
An unintentionally bad ad created by a game company that bought the rights to the Guitar Hero name (the original Guitar Hero team now works on Rock Band) and whose best days are behind it?
I like the attachable fret buttons-and-pick idea; I’m less sure about yelling “Rock out!” into the microphone to activate Star Power, and not at all thrilled about the silly “put out the fire on your guitar by blowing into the microphone” concept.
According to a BusinessWeek article, the real threat to Google isn’t Microsoft or Yahoo!, but cell phones:. “As more people use cell phones and their tiny glass screens to gain access to the Internet, Google and its fellow online advertisers will have less space, or what’s called ad inventory, to place marketing messages for customers. Google makes money selling ad inventory. And its ad inventory is diminished on a cell phone.”
Click the ad to see it at full size.![Old Apple ][ ad featuring Ben Franklin: "What Kind of Man Owns His Own Computer?"](http://www.globalnerdy.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/apple-ben-franklin-ad.jpg "Old Apple ][ ad featuring Ben Franklin: \"What Kind of Man Owns His Own Computer?\"")
Yes, because if there’s one surefire way to convince everyone Vista is cool, cutting edge and not liable to get frazzled by life’s minor complications, it’s hiring a 1990s sitcom star and professional kvetcher! Who, um, very visibly