Recently in Marketing Category

Playstation 3


XBox 360


iPod


Helio Ocean


Overall, I think they're all well-made and pretty impressive pieces of advertising. A polymorphous swiss-army-octopus-speaker-city creature, an 80-foot tall ogre with a furry hoodie, Paul McCartney dancing through a tripped out, inverted vector-spawning city with his mandolin, and a collection of metallic, party-planning robots sending messages on their equally shiny, holograph-producing new phones. Definitely a ton of creativity and probably even more money going into these commercials.

But, while they do stand out among practically all of the competition, these advertisements are somewhat predictable. Each clip is representing some huge new technology in the marketplace, and it's not particularly surprising when they try to embody/exaggerate the cutting-edge appeal of their products. If you would have asked me a year ago how I thought Sony and Microsoft would go about advertising their new consoles, I probably wouldn't have been able to give you all the details, and I might have left out the part about an urban medieval war and waves of arrows sailing through the city sky. However, I could have told you that each of the multi-billion dollar companies would be dumping an absurd amount of resources into their marketing campaigns, probably utilizing the best multimedia software and developers that they could get their hands on.

Now, take a look at some of Apple's iPhone commercials below.







A little different of a vibe, right? Minimalist, chill (visually and aurally), and no cgi. Unlike the first set of ads, the iPhone commercials don't depict the product in any kind of unrealistic light or behaving in any extraordinary manner. There's narrative in the background describing a fairly plausible situation that potential iPhone owners might find themselves in. The hands then react accordingly to the scenario, demonstrating some of the more impressive (but, by no means, mind-blowing) functionalities of the product. It's completely straightforward - "This is the iPhone. This is what it can do." - and as far as technical production goes, it couldn't be much more simple. With a nice camera, a greenscreen, and an iPhone, it would be reasonable to assume that an undergraduate college student could have put the commercial together for some medium-sized course project in a couple of days. Yet it works so well, and in my opinion, it was a brilliant marketing move.

A huge part of Apple's fairly recent success can be attributed to the company's devotion to simplicity. Its products have comparatively few buttons, ports and plugs. They're clean, stylish and intuitive. Apple really fosters the notion that technology is for everyone, and products should be easy to use regardless of technical background. The iPhone is no exception. In fact, it's one of the shining examples of this theory.

The commercials do a lovely job of demonstrating the ease of using the iPhone. They show how quickly and effortlessly users can navigate through the system and accomplish whatever goals that might spontaneously arise (sharing photos with friends, getting directions to the nearest seafood restaurant, etc.). They're pushing the idea that in our busy and unpredictable lives, the iPhone can provide us with rhyme and reason. It gives us all the technologies we might need right at the tips of our fingers, so easily accessible that we'll never miss a beat. There's a lot going on in these ads, but everything feels calm, smooth and in control (largely due to the music, the hands' efficient use of the iPhone, and strategic cuts).

And who can take advantage of this hip new technology? Well, as alluded to before and as implied by the exclusion of any human beings (save a pair of hands) in the commercials, nobody's left out- the iPhone is for everyone. And this philosophy works nicely with the minimalistic style that Apple's so inclined to - no people or words (save the very end where the product name appears) interrupting the audiences attention - just the product, in plain site, available for everyone.