Apple Advertisements: Part 2

[arn]

Damon Wright's weblog gives us some information about his involvement in "Real People" Apple Ads in which he is featured. Of interest, he notes a second part of the campaign which will involve celebritiesL

On a day's notice, they shipped me to Boston to hang out with what turned out to be the second to the last round of 25 of us "Joe Regulars" who were to be shot on film by Mr. Morris himself. Apparently, the next round would be celebraties. We hung out with one, but I still can't say who. I have a picture of myself with him. His arm's around me. What a coup.

Morris filmed each of us for somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour and a half. In between film role change, they took about a hundred stills of us. Keep in mind, as this is happening, and the hot lights are beating down on us, we have no idea what this is for.

This reflects and confirms GNYC's report about this ad campaign back in May. Per that report, future spots may include Lou Reed, Spike Lee, Bela Fleck as well as other Grammy artists.

[beno]

ouch, damon wright better not read what The Register has to say about him...

And what are we to make of 'Damon Wright' [parental caution advised]: an immaculately manicured (always a bad sign), post-dot.com Manson Family cultist distinguished by a moustache that weaves a seamless and sinister 'w' between his nose and his upper lip. What the 'w' means, only Damon himself knows.

http://www.theregus.com/content/39/25261.html

[shakespeare]

I hope Bill Clinton is in one of the celebrity ads. I hear he uses Macs. And he's pretty cool.

[Chris Fam]

Also here http://www.lickmysweaty.com/truth

[synergy]

That sweaty guy sounds like someone did shove an iPod up his arse.

Man talk about someone with nothing better to do.
Oh its a parody. Yeah right. With all the vile hatred thrown there it sure does not look like it. Wonder when the Apple legal letter will come?

[Mr. Anderson]

I never really liked the 'real' people ads, they didn't really do it for me. I'm hoping they get some very cool celebs and industry leaders to do it, similar to their 'Think Different' campaign - the people they used in the posters are icons of today's society.

[Backtothemac]

Originally posted by shakespeare
I hope Bill Clinton is in one of the celebrity ads. I hear he uses Macs. And he's pretty cool.

Staffers at the White house haver long said that he never used Macs. Now, Larua Bush has one, as do Jenna and Barbara. There how is that rumor.

Now, the ads.

I personally think that it would be neat to see celebz interact with the ordinary people. Like the DJ girl and say, a music celeb. They could both talk about the Mac, and what it has done for them. The pro could discuss the TiBook, and the consumer the iBook.

They need to get Nikki Sixx and Donna Di Arico. They are huge, huge Mac users. They had a great interview with Nikki and Donna on TechTV during Comdex. It was great. Here they are interviewing them about PC stuff, and they are talking about their iPods, and Airport, etc. It was awesome.

[PGant]

Just to set the record straight, I don't have sea-life sounds on my iPod as his site suggests.

More often than not, I'm rocking to the swinging sounds of Zoldak Flargbakken, master of the Lithuanian bladder pipes (with apologies and homage to Grettir Asmundarson at TinyPineapple.com).

[arn]

Originally posted by PGant
Just to set the record straight, I don't have sea-life sounds on my iPod as his site suggests.

More often than not, I'm rocking to the swinging sounds of Zoldak Flargbakken, master of the Lithuanian bladder pipes (with apologies and homage to Grettir Asmundarson at TinyPineapple.com).

Mr Gant... welcome to Macrumors!

I would not take any ad-criticisms personally...

arn

[PGant]

Do you mean Mr. Sweaty Guy's site? Nah! How could I take that sort of thing personally? Apart from the needless vulgarities, I thought it was kinda funny (hmm...maybe I shouldn't admit that).

Seriously though...the worst thing that can happen to an ad campaign is that people ignore it or don't notice it at all. Based on my cursory glance at the posts on this board, it seems pretty clear that this need not be a concern for this campaign. And remember the adage about parody: it's the highest form of flattery.

PG

[arn]

Originally posted by PGant
Do you mean Mr. Sweaty Guy's site? Nah! How could I take that sort of thing personally? Apart from the needless vulgarities, I thought it was kinda funny (hmm...maybe I shouldn't admit that).

Seriously though...the worst thing that can happen to an ad campaign is that people ignore it or don't notice it at all.

See http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2002/...10025349.shtml for the full range of commentary on the new ads from those on this site.

arn

[bobindashadows]

Lol anyone else notice they were stupid enough to put the Apple Copyright on it? I'm surprised Apple hasn't pummeled them into oblivion yet... wonder what that guy whose name starts with F thinks about the site....

Welcome, Mr. Gant, to macrumors! Its pretty cool that we have someone from the commercials on the forums :-p Unless, of course you are someone impersonating Patrick Gant, just like someone does with Steve every couple days or so

[lordsinforge]

Seriously, this guy has to realize that Apple could sue the crap out of him in a New York minute. Copyright violations, I mean the moron just took all of the apple site and stuck it on his server.

But I think Apple will likely handle this quietly, I mean there is no need to draw attention to the a**hole now is there.

I am waiting for some cracker that has a fondness for macs to jack the guys site though.

LS

[gandalf55]

we all know Shaq, etc. are iPod fans, so it would be cool to see them do something too... but i like something where an ordinary person is talking with a celeb about how kick ass Apple technology is compared to Win.

BT or Moby with someone starting out making music
George Lucas or Speilberg with a film student
etc...

dont know if thats strategically correct to do, cause its not really about "switch"

But they could do Pixar, Disney, etc.

[bobindashadows]

Originally posted by lordsinforge
Seriously, this guy has to realize that Apple could sue the crap out of him in a New York minute. Copyright violations, I mean the moron just took all of the apple site and stuck it on his server.

But I think Apple will likely handle this quietly, I mean there is no need to draw attention to the a**hole now is there.

I am waiting for some cracker that has a fondness for macs to jack the guys site though.

LS

I wrote an email to apple's copyright agent as soon as i was done at the site lol

[damon]

Originally posted by beno
ouch, damon wright better not read what The Register has to say about him...

And what are we to make of 'Damon Wright' [parental caution advised]: an immaculately manicured (always a bad sign), post-dot.com Manson Family cultist distinguished by a moustache that weaves a seamless and sinister 'w' between his nose and his upper lip. What the 'w' means, only Damon himself knows.

http://www.theregus.com/content/39/25261.html

You know, I think this stuff is too funny. Frankly, I haven't seen the thing on TV yet so I'm not sure how to react to it. I laughed a LOT when I read the register. If you can't tell in the ad, I'm not actually <i>old</i> enough to be a manson family cultist, but I'll take immaculately manicured any day. When I saw the sweaty guy's work... well, it was a lot of work and he should get some credit for that. There's certainly no accounting for taste.

[Rower_CPU]

Wow!

Patrick and Damon both posting to the forums...crazy!

Welcome guys, I think you both have great attitudes about this stuff.

Glad to have you guys out there as spokespeople for Apple.

[AaronAdams]

Well, might as well make it three of us

I've been reading here for a while and I figured it was time I said something. So, um, how's fame treating you guys?

Aaron
---
http://homepage.mac.com/adamsa/

[Rower_CPU]

Thanks for posting Aaron!

Great job on your web page. It's right up there with all of Apple's verbiage on the subject.

So how long have all of you been lurking?

[damon]

Originally posted by AaronAdams
Well, might as well make it three of us

I've been reading here for a while and I figured it was time I said something. So, um, how's fame treating you guys?

Aaron
---
http://homepage.mac.com/adamsa/

AARON! I KNEW you were here somewhere! Man, you look GREAT on the big screen!! And fame? Did you know I'm a post-dot.com Manson Family cultist? Apparently I didn't tell you guys that in Boston. Love the site. I'm gonna link it right now.

damon

[BlueDjinn]

Greetings to all three of you guys! (As well as everyone else...)

BTW--in case you have no idea what AAPLTalk is, this may be familiar to some of you:

http://www.aapltalk.com/shootouts/

Anyway, I wanted to say a special congrats to Aaron, Damon and Patrick, as well as to alert y'all to Yet Another Message Board Discussion Of The Switch Campaign (aka YAMBDOTSC):

http://tech-report.com/news_reply.x/3706/0/

...wherein hard-core MSFT/Intel/AMD/hardware folks have been chomping at the bit on Apple's latest ad campaign (over 500 comments to date).

Just wanted to say howdy and to welcome you to the Light Side of The Force

--BlueDjinn

[arn]

Originally posted by AaronAdams
Well, might as well make it three of us

I've been reading here for a while and I figured it was time I said something. So, um, how's fame treating you guys?

heh...

now that computer programmer's (Haxton) gotta be around here somewhere....

I wrote this to Damon privately... but basically, I really like the ads... and feel they will be very effective. I know there are obviously varying opinions on this topic... but those are my 2cents.

arn

[AaronAdams]

Hi there Damon, Rower_CPU and BlueDjinn. I'm glad you liked my page. I spent a good hunk of my weekend writing it up. I haven't been able to put much time into making it pretty, and there are still about ten thousand other things I'd like to say.

And thank you for the compliment Damon Personally, I cringe a little bit every time I see myself and I wish they had a better picture to use for the print ads. Oh well I learned last night that seeing yourself on TV has a way of interrupting an, um, intimate moment with your special someone I'm embarrassed to admit that, but it was funny.

As for The Register, I read their review of the ad campaign and rolled my eyes. Must everyone be a critic? And especially nasty critics at that. Oh my God, real people may not be pretty! How horrible! Even worse, they may have quirks or be slightly eccentric. Damn them!

I've been watching this forum for a long while, and I've posted to a few others. All the conversations about the ads are exasperating. Everyone has an opinion, which is fine, but sometimes I wonder where people get some of their crazy thoughts. Oh well, Apple likes me and that's what counts. I hope we're selling a lot of computers for them. They've treated me well and I hope they ask more of me in the future. Maybe an appearance at MacWorld?

So far, my life has changed very little because of these ads. Every now and then mom or grandma or a friend will call on the phone to say they saw me. I was recognized at the Cincinnati Apple Store - there are two pictures of it on my page. The manager came out to meet me and the staff was pretty psyched. I didn't even have to show my ID when I paid for my camera That's been my only chance to be famous. I haven't been recognized anywhere else. I don't think Dayton has a big Apple following.

But, who knows what the next few months will bring. Like I said on my page, I'd like to become more active in the big Apple scheme of things. I've just gotta figure out how.

Aaron

[PGant]

Hey Aaron and Damon. Nice to see everyone again! Gee this board is turning into *the* hangout place for the Switch folks, thanks to the write up on Damon's excellent blog. A few more of us and this will be a full fledged family reunion! I think I saw Mark F's post (it was on another board), so perhaps he's next to join in the fun.

I've quite enjoyed reading Damon and Aaron's posts on their thoughts and experiences. I've thought about writing about my own experience as the token Canadian in the ensemble, but I haven't been able to find the time. But I will. Really.

I too found the experience to be rather dizzying, and I can't say enough about how well I've been treated by Apple and Chiat\Day. Ironlically enough, I have yet to see my own ad playing on TV. Apparently it ran during the Stanley Cup finals but I missed it (I'm a Senators fan, so my hockey season ended a while back). Has anyone else seen it?

In other news...I couldn't help but notice that Mr. Sweaty Palms' site (or whatever his name is) has been pulled down, apparently at the behest of Apple's legal department. Cool, isn't it? Someone makes fun of me and Apple shows up at their door and smacks them around! I guess it's true what they say: buying a Mac is about *alot* more than buying a computer. I sure could have used these guys back in grade school!

PG

[bobindashadows]

Originally posted by PGant
In other news...I couldn't help but notice that Mr. Sweaty Palms' site (or whatever his name is) has been pulled down, apparently at the behest of Apple's legal department. Cool, isn't it? Someone makes fun of me and Apple shows up at their door and smacks them around! I guess it's true what they say: buying a Mac is about *alot* more than buying a computer. I sure could have used these guys back in grade school!

PG

Hey Mr. Gant, welcome to the forums! I'm pretty newbish myself because i just lurk and when i think of something to post, several others have beat me to it! Ah well *shakes hand* I wish Apple would come rushing to me when people make fun of me, because i just graduated from junior high! I'm ahead of my time I program

I'm not sure if I was the first to squeal to Apple Legal, i doubt it, but i tried! They really coulda gotten their ass sued off if Apple wanted though, they linked directly to several images on Apple's servers and also put Apple's copyright on the bottom.

Again, welcome to the forums, and try not to get too addicted I need a fix every 15 minutes or so