John Lennon Digitally Reanimated for Unsettling OLPC Ad

The OLPC Foundation’s last advertising effort was close to perfect, with a strong message and affecting imagery. Their latest? A creepy, boomer-manipulating, possibly effective oddity.

Lennon’s soliloquy, a patchwork of Beatles allusions, catchphrases, old footage and digital additions, is distractingly strange to the point that it loses what little efficacy it could have had, at least for me. Thing is, I might not be a member of the target audience. When you consider who that audience might be, the ad makes quite a bit more sense.

Here’s the recipe:

1. A slightly esoteric and novel project, with which you can send cheap, rugged laptops to the developing world
2. Old, monied, formerly (proudly) altruistic baby boomers
3. Their greatest, deadest idol, muttering nonsense like he used to
4. Guilt!

Complain as I may about the ad, if it results in thousands of defiantly ponytailed fifty-somethings buying OLPCs for disadvantaged children, then well, who cares how goofy it is? [BBC]