The TV Fan and The Football Fan

Gordon's Gin clearly know how to make an ad that appeals to me. Take an actor from probably the best show on British TV in the last decade, add some funny lines, and sprinkle with some words from a legend of football.

The idea is nice too, and apart from feeling a little overdone they come across well.

I haven't had gin in about 12 years though, going to be a fair job to sell it to me...

Annoyingly though, Campaign are now paywalled, Visit4info won't let you embed, and YouTube don't have it... so here it is.

Whilst watching TV yesterday...

"New X Cream from ABC.

Our cream is THIS and does THIS. It's filled with THIS and THIS and THIS and THIS so it does THIS, THIS and THIS.

Does your cream do THIS?

X Cream from ABC does THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIIIS..."

ARGH!!!!

Why not just kidnap us, strap us to a chair and force us Clockwork Orange style to watch a three hour seminar on how your cream is minutely better than the next brand, until we turn into loyal zombies working on auto drive.

For fucks sake, a product feature list is not an ad.

Why the iPad Might Just Work

My view on the iPad so far is about the same as my view on 50" LED 3D HDTV's, a lovely idea but not something that hits the sweet spot on my Need vs Cost internal diagram (I am a planner).
The new TV ad though is smart, and shows intelligent thinking from the agency and Apple. The iPad is the kind of device that will find it's own position in our needs. Rather like no one knew they wanted motion sensing remote controls until they played Wii Sports; Apple are telling us it does everything but deliberately stating it is up to us to determine what makes it special.

They could have sold it as the ultimate web browser, the new kindle, the ultimate travelling video player, handheld gaming heaven, etc etc. But with their core userbase of (let's face it) die hard obsessives that would buy a paper cup if Steve Jobs had sipped from it; they knew they could afford to give it some time to settle and find it's own niche before they start trying to guide people one way or another.

This thinking didn't work for PS3, which got lost in the void between games machine and video machine and browser and so on. Somehow though it seems perfect for this device that people want without knowing why, ellicting a kind of "We will make it work because it's so pretty we have to" response from developers and (so far) customers.

Instead of hiding from it, Apple are revelling in the fact that iPad is so new you don't know what to do with it yet... but you already know how to use it when that day comes.