Excerpt from: It’s As If Apple Has Hired Don Draper by MG Siegler on Jul 10, 2010
Watching Apple’s iPhone 4 FaceTime commercial, it reminds me of something: Mad Men. The television show is starting its fourth season in a couple of weeks, but the commercial takes me back to the end of season one — an episode called “The Wheel.” In it, ad man Don Draper gives a presentation to Kodak showing why Sterling Cooper should be handling the account for their new picture projector.
The pitch (which you can see here
) starts out with two execs from Kodak acknowledging that creating an ad around this “wheel” is hard because “wheels aren’t really seen as exciting technology, even though they are the original.” Draper fires back:
“Technology is a glittering lure. But there’s the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash. If they have a sentimental bond with the product.”
In the iPhone 4 FaceTime commercial, that’s exactly what Apple is playing up. As we’re all well aware, video chat, even on phones, is nothing new. Instead of focusing on the technology, they’re conveying how you’ll feel if you use the product, by making you feel alongside those in the commercial. They’re creating this sentimental bond.
Draper continues, talking about an old copyrighter he used to work with, Teddy. “He also talked about a deeper bond with the product. Nostalgia. It’s delicate. But potent.” Draper fires up the projector.
“Teddy told me that in Greek, Nostalgia literally means ‘the pain from an old wound.’ It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone.” Again, that’s this FaceTime commercial.
It’s not old pictures, but it’s more powerful. It’s loved ones that you haven’t seen in a while, that you’re apart from, right there in front of you, live. “It takes us to a place where we ache to go again,” as Draper puts it. “It lets us travel the way a child travels. Round and around and back home again. To a place where we know we’re loved.”
And Apple goes a step further. Rather than just playing up the family bond which they do with the baby crawling on the bed, the mother with the baby, and the grandparents with the graduating grandchild, Apple shows a pregnant wife getting an ultrasound and her husband in the military, presumably overseas, watching. When the wife hits the button to flip the camera and show the unborn baby on the monitor, they cut to a shot of the husband and his face drops as if he’s about to cry. It’s extremely powerful stuff.
Watch the FaceTime ad:
