As I write this during the second week of February, I am truly amazed at the two great events of the last three weeks. First, my beloved Broncos win the Super Bowl. Then, Apple comes out with the best ad in years. Life is great from my perspective.
The snail ad is truly great advertising. The message is clean, simple, and powerful. Clean, because all the viewer sees is the snail with the Pentium chip on its back. Then, just the panoramic view of a G3 Power Mac. Simple, because the visual image of a snail crawling across a white background. No visual confusion to distract the viewer. Powerful, due to the straightforward message it creates: the Pentium is slow! The second area to examine was Apple’s choice of air time. NBC’s Thursday night lineup is a powerful one. The viewing age fit Apple’s target purchase audience nicely. I had been upset when Apple announced it wouldn’t spend the money to advertise during the Super Bowl, after all, over 1/2 of all televisions turned on would be tuned to the game. Many of the games viewers only watch to see the commercials. The snail ad would have garnered as much talk as the Bud frog ads around the water cooler that Monday morning. But, I digress too much. Apple has thrown down the gauntlet both for Intel and more importantly, itself. Keep pushing Steve!!!!
Cool vs. Hot
Last month, I used Apple’s first “Think Different” thematic style, so what happens, they changed the rules. OK, fine, I can go with the flow. In the commercial below, I build upon the snail concept and point out another PowerPC chip advantage over the Pentium II, including the new 0.25 micron architecture models.
Scene: A white screen. The camera pans down to show a running Windows laptop with a cooked egg (sunny side-up) sputtering on top of the keyboard. A military drum roll plays in the background.
The camera pans to the left showing a running G3 with an ice cube sitting on its keys while the active-matrix screen quickly flashes one image after another. The skating theme from “Peanuts” plays in the background.
The voice of Richard Dreyfus comes on, “The PowerPC G3 processor. Far and away, the coolest running processor on the market. Apple Macintosh, giving cool a new meaning”. A larger “Think Different” sign appears, then the Apple logo.
Thank You
It was wonderful to hear all the responses to my February article. Please keep your comments coming as they really energize me to continue writing.
Recently, I had the opportunity to see the CompUSA Apple store concept. It’s a winner. I checked it out on a weekday morning and there were several people inside the area. The concept works, especially with the retail consolidation taking place. These store will become a gathering place for the Mac community, not to mention a source of instant advertising for Apple. Think of it, customers will see plenty of people in the Apple section and will be naturally pulled in to check the product out.
Mark Marcantonio (MarkMarc@aol.com)
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