newVideoPlayer("tikid_gawker.flv", 475, 376);The Pitch Time for a little holiday nostalgia this week, as Hype Sheet goes digging through the crates for this 1983 Texas Instruments gem—a textbook example of preying on parental fears. A blond, bowl-cutted moppet sits on daddy’s lap, toying with an educational program on the family’s snazzy TI-99/4A. “A Texas Instruments home computer can give him a real head start,” intones the honey-voiced narrator, as Junior successfully identifies a pixilated rabbit. At the end, however, the message turns more ominous: “Don’t put it off!”—the unspoken end of that sentence being, “…or your kid will be DUMB!” America, however, wouldn’t be cowed by scare tactics: TI was forced to close its home-computer division that same year. Was the home of the integrated circuit just a victim of bad timing? Or did it botch its marketing strategy?
newVideoPlayer("samjuke.flv", 475, 376);The Pitch As a raucous Hardnox tracks kicks in, a nimble-footed, ponytailed cat named Charles does his thing on an unadorned soundstage. And what a thing it is—the sort of gorgeously fluid dancing that makes us Joe Q. Publics curse the gods for failing to grant us such talent. Charles’s moves are all the more impressive when you notice that he’s performing while clutching something in his right hand—one of those new Samsung Jukes that Verizon’s pushing (and aggressively subsidising) nowadays. Is this specs-free spot—which is part of a dance-centric series—gonna sell the kiddos on the Juke? Or will they chortle at a mere 2GB worth of internal memory?
newVideoPlayer("acerspot.flv", 475, 376);The Pitch Bollywood tropes can be hard for non-Indians to process, and the song-and-dance routine in this Acer spot is no exception. It starts off as a West Side Story clone, with finger-snapping toughs—er, “toughs”—bobbing their heads. But why are they in a prison? And what is matinee idol Hrithik Roshan doing there, teasing two inmates whose sentences include the forced use of laptops sans Acer’s “eTechnology” bloatware? As the ensuing musical production explains, using an Acer Aspire 4920 shall liberate you from the shackles of technofrustration. “Life is busy, Acer makes it easy!” chimes Roshan, assisted by a gaggle of comely backup dancers. Perhaps, but does Acer really have a prayer of becoming the subcontinent’s go-to laptop brand?
newVideoPlayer("attvegas.flv", 475, 376);The Pitch We’ve seen this approach before, eh? Looks like one of those AT&T commercials in which a dropped call leads to an awkward situation—a mother spontaneously revealing her sexually licentious past, for example, or Roger Clemens pushing it one season too far. But this schlubby hubby’s problem isn’t poor reception. Rather, it’s the fact that he’s just lost $5,800 playing blackjack in Vegas—a revelation he conveniently buries midway through the conversation. His disgruntled, potato-peeling wife doesn’t explode, but points out (correctly) that dear hubby seems to be a bloomin’ idiot. Good thing the unhappy couple is taking advantage of AT&T’s Rollover minutes—a promotion inherited from Cingular—or the call would be sinking them even further into debt. Why has AT&T forsaken its long-running “fewest dropped calls” pitch in favour of stressing its trademarked Rollover deal?
newVideoPlayer("bladecenter.flv", 475, 376);The Pitch A balding butterball stumbles through a barren, Tatooine-like landscape. He’s on the search for water, no doubt, but instead he finds a cluster of fridge-sized servers—the gods are obviously displeased with our afflicted protagonist. “The servers are too hot!” he exclaims, before crumbling in a heap. Moments from death, however, a bespectacled angel appears—the archetypal IT geek, passing along a message of sweet salvation. Turns out the desert scenario was all in Butterball’s tortured mind, and he’s just passed out at the base of a nifty IBM BladeCenter—a server ostensibly designed to run cooler than its competitors. All in all, a no-nonsense, slightly ham-fisted spot—as well as a salvo in an increasingly bitter server war twixt IBM and HP. And so begineth an era in which enterprise hardware shall be marketed like Fruit Loops—what an exciting time to be alive.
newVideoPlayer("iphonedoug_gawker.flv", 475, 286);The Pitch Apple does a 180 from its usual DayGlo approach and mounts a man-on-the-street campaign, all in the name of that milestone gadget you either love to love, or love to hate. First up is recent iPhone convert Doug, who ungrammatically hails his non-bricked gizmo as “one of the greatest advancements in the history of mankind.” His primary evidence? The fact you can scroll past voicemails that have obviously been left by mendacious deadbeats. And that’s it—the spot closes with a staged-looking outtake of Doug leaving the scene, a shot meant to stress the fact that everything you just saw was completely unscripted. Okay, so this very column recently quipped that Apple might want to consider changing up is ad approach, if for no other reason than to keep the masses guessing. But is Doug the answer?
newVideoPlayer("sonyhd_gawker.flv", 475, 376);The Pitch On the eve of the new Bravia ad’s debut in the U.K., it’s worth taking a gander at one of Sony’s more prosaic creations. This commercial doesn’t hawk a specific product, but rather Sony’s entire lineup of high-definition goods—part of the company’s ongoing “HD World” campaign (a.k.a. the “Feel” campaign, a.k.a. the “like.no.other” campaign). Confused? The narration in this ad won’t help, as the voiceover asks a series of philosophical stumpers such as “What is plain?” and “What is dirty?” The rhetorical questions fly by for nearly a full minute, layered over images of urban decay. Finally, a ray of hope—an adorable moppet in a red raincoat, and the optimistic declaration that all we need “is a new way of seeing…Welcome to a new world.” Without the visual aids—notably a closing montage of Sony products—one might think this spot was advocating some sort of utopian socialist revolution. Did Sony step over the fine line that separates high-brow art from contemptible bunk? Or is this an ingenious bit of brand building that’ll play well across cultures?
newVideoPlayer("craneaccident_gawker.flv", 475, 376); The Pitch Rarely does wanton demolition fail to entertain, and this Microsoft spot is certainly no exception. The ad starts off as a shoulder-shrugger—with a crane slowly lifting a pallet of telephony equipment into place—then turns uproarious when the cable snaps. A car is thus pancaked in spectacular fashion, and the handheld camera pans across a few startled onlookers—including the crane operator, who skedaddles from the scene as if Cerberus himself were nipping at his heels. The spot ends with a couple of banners fashioned after police tape, imploring viewers to “VoIP As You Are” with Microsoft’s gracious assistance. So when did the Colossus of Redmond develop a sense of humor? And will businesses really be wheedled into trusting their treasured voice communications to the folks who brought us the Blue Screen of Death?
newVideoPlayer("ipodfeist.flv", 475, 376);The Pitch Our cooler-than-thou cousins over at Gawker recently pronounced Canadian songstress Feist yesterday’s news, but the folks at TBWA/Chiat/Day apparently didn’t get the message. Their latest Apple ad, for the new vid-enhanced iPod nano, features Feist in all her sparkly, hip-hugging glory, tweeting out her super-catchy “1234.” And, really, there ain’t a lot more to it, save for a disembodied hand that enters the screen to reveal the case colours (and, presumably, to provide the viewers with some sense of scale). Why, it’s almost like Apple is so sure of mammoth sales that it isn’t even trying any more—imagine that! Will the House That Jobs Built ever regret putting its ad campaigns on cruise control? Or is there something to that age-old adage of “Stick with the one that brung ya”—especially when you’ve figured out a way to fatten your margins even more?
newVideoPlayer("stefanihp_gawker.flv", 475, 376);The Pitch Gwen Stefani wants you to know that she just oozes creativity from every pore. “People think you can turn creativity on and off, but it’s not like that,” the singer-cum-designer declares while sashaying through a cloud of fluttering photographs. “It just kind of comes out, a mashup of all these things you collect in your mind.” Soon enough, the surprisingly racktacular Gwen is strutting through the streets of Tokyo while wearing a form-fitting rugby shirt and cherry-red lipstick—an art geek’s dream. The spot ends with her gazing into the night sky, and a come-on for viewers to visit hp.com/gwen and try their hand at creating paper dolls and photo albums. And therein lies this ad’s real purpose—trying to find a new-and-better way of integrating the web into traditional (as opposed to guerrilla) marketing campaigns. Is HP on the right path, or are the cool kids right in mocking Stefani’s vanity—and, by extension, HP’s misguidedness?
