Stuck Inside Due To Inclement Weather? Starting Bobbing!
By Beth in New York Times, Tech, Adam Sandler, pop culture, quirky newsbits, Apple, iTunes, Mac ads, iPod on December 16 2007
In the interest of bringing you a quirky newsbit of the week, I scoured Youtube for fake Apple/Mac ads. The premise behind this: Everyone wants to be Apple (er, Google) or at the very least, win a chance to work for them. Plenty of parodies exist on the theme of the the Mac/PC guy. Some more memorable than others, but the best Apple ad of all time (and a REAL one, at that) remains the Orwellian commercial that came out around this time of season way back before Apple was Macintosh. In the interest of keeping with the 80s theme here: There’s something about growing up in the Max Headroom-inflicted era of the 80s and hearing, Music is my boyfriend [and girlfriend] alongside an electronica beat that I can’t help but swoon over.
As this clip, which integrates Mr. Bean, the Spice Girls, an iPod, iTunes, and Mac/PC illustrates, the tragic flaw of majority of the pseudo Mac ads is their lack of simplicity - the core ingredient to Apple’s success in advertising. Witnessing a few of these ads in succession makes one even more nostalgic and appreciative for the type of vision, clarity, and intent with which Apple creates their ads. So as a final follow up, the best fake Apple ad of the season is indeed the Wired toted disco Christmas ad with the Mac computer displays. But there is a hope for novice hacks out there: Companies that are able to capitalize on the success of Apple ads by piggybacking on those infamous light bulb Mac ideas and leveraging this popularity, have the best chance at creating memorable ads this holiday season.
So start creating and uploading to YouTube. Just keep the Muppets, Michael Jackson, and Columbine out of it.
