Have you seen the “We Got Now” ad campaign by New Balance? We’ll have I got one for Nike, Adidas, or Reebok, et. al. to respond with. It came to me when me and the Mrs. visited an Apple store for the first time. Turns out they do let people over 60 in…in limited numbers. We almost got tossed when my wife uttered the word TracFone. (That evidently is a vulgarity in Apple-speak.)
So, you go through the front doors and straight in front of you is a 12 feet by 24 feet screen displaying all things appealing, thriving, and Apple. Remember the iconic Apple Mackintosh 1984 Super Bowl ad? Google this “1984 Apple’s Mackintosh Commercial (HD)”.
In that commercial the black and white parts are all shaved-headed men. They have a cadence, a march, a drone-like feel. Then a young woman in red shorts, a white halter top, bouncing breasts (See an earlier blog about the significance of this image. It’s not merely or even mainly sexual, but very powerful. I understand why women playing sports wrap theirs tightly, but those who do so for feminist reasons are making a very inhuman mistake.), and running with a sledgehammer at port arms. She runs through the automatons watching a black and white old man droning on about unity. She does a discus twirl and heave-ho’s the sledgehammer into the screen shattering it and blowing “away” the drones watching.
My commercial takes place at the Apple store. The drones will all be young women, with short hair, black one-piece jump suits watching a very young woman drone on about equality on their giant screen. And an old man will come in the doors, perhaps as in the original he’ll be pursued by running truncheon-bearing young women. As in the original, the old man will be running with the sledgehammer at port arms. He will be dressed in a wife-beater t-shirt, blue shorts, and will look his age (Guess it can’t be me, then, huh?), he will start his discus twirl but it gets slower and slower. Meanwhile the screen is displaying his name, SSN, birthdate, address, height, weight, and calculating the amount of force necessary to disable him. As his discus twirl grows ever slower he collapses and the screen zaps him.
Tight focus on his shoes now. It’s the logo of whatever brand produces this epic ad. Suddenly the old man leaps to his feet with a bounce and bounds out down the aisle blowing the watching young women “away”. Then the tag line flashes across the whole screen: We got next.
The genius of this ad is the misdirection. You think it’s about tech, but it has nothing to do with tech but tennis shoes. The implication being your brand of tennis shoes will be as big of a change and an improvement in the shoe world as the Mac was in home computing.
Anybody who can sell this to a shoe company gets 50% of the royalties. Anybody who can make this into a short and get Netflix to air it can do so for free. I just want creative consultant credit.
