"Goodbye 1984" - Motorola Super Bowl Ad

thousands of emotionless drones "enjoying" their Apple products. The whole thing is an obvious swipe at Apple for seemingly endorsing the very homogeny it waged war against in its Ridley Scott-directed Super Bowl commercial for the Macintosh back in 1984

Bring it on Moto.
 
I'm no expert on what works in TV ads, and I believe anyone who claims they are are frauds. We know better what doesn't work. I have produced several thousand TV 30 second ads and over 2500 half hour TV infomercials in the past 28 years in TV advertising and what I noticed is that not one ad that goes after the big boy on the block, pokes fun at the competition product, the competition philosophy, management, or even mentions the competition in a derogatory way ever accomplishes success for its own product. The ad that simply points out its own virtues, gets the most results.

A company has 30 seconds to get it's message out to create TOMA (Top Of Mind Awareness ) The more it spends trying to create a negative image of the competition, the less it has to create a positive image for its own product. Plus it assumes it IS creating a negative image when maybe the spot only works for those who are already the advertiser's fanboys.

The Xoom is a great product and will surely be a Galaxy Tab killer. It is top performing tablet with smooth, slick operation as I saw it first hand at CES. It's too bad what I saw in the teaser so far, roughly 2/3 of the total spot, shows nothing more than a 'me too' of what can be done on an ipad. I hope the remaining part of the spot will display what the Xoom does better.

Reading the comments after the spot - I think this guy gets it:

buddhistMonkey 3 hours ago
There are three big problems with this ad: first, it's a derivative advertisement for a derivative product, which negates a lot of whatever cleverness it might otherwise have had. Second, there are something like a half-billion people in the world wearing white earbuds on a daily basis, which is a large number of potential customers to be insulting in one throw. Third, the metaphorical Apple "drone" at the end of the commercial is a cutie pie who makes me want to buy a white hoodie with matching headphones.
 
Not an expert Don, but you gave us three paragraphs of your not-expert take on the ad. ;) :D

So its a Tab killer because it has the precious 10" screen?
 
I am by far an expert when it comes to advertising but negative adds have never worked for me. Show me what you got, not what the other guy doesn't. I am by far an expert when it comes to tablets as well, but the Moto does look promising to me. I have a birthday coming up mid year, hopefully the new tablets will be out and I can compare them all. The iPad I have now will be the baseline.
Obtw I do like my 10 inches.:rolleyes: :D (lol)​
 
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"One Way" - Well let's see. That reminds me that "one way" actually works. And is stable. Some Android stuff only works on some Androids. And maybe differently, if at all, on others. It reminds me of MS Windows. So many programs "almost work." Or don't even come close, like Corel VideoStudio.

More and more, I can see the value in "just works" as opposed to taking up another hobby. I guess I'm a pizza dish guy, who just wants to watch TV, as opposed to an FTA type, willing to tweak and hunt and run it as a hobby (& get some rewards, such as better PQ). And until I see something I want in an Android that I can't get in the iPhone, I'll keep my grandfathered unlimited data plan.
 
The full ad was ok, and while the apple drones were obvious to people like us, in some ways I think the commercial would only make sense to folks like us, who pay attention to this stuff.

Then again, all of the commercials have been pretty lame this year.
 
The full ad was ok, and while the apple drones were obvious to people like us, in some ways I think the commercial would only make sense to folks like us, who pay attention to this stuff.

Then again, all of the commercials have been pretty lame this year.
I have to agree about being lame but I did like the VW commercial with the little boy playing Darth Vader. Cute.
 
Not an expert Don, but you gave us three paragraphs of your not-expert take on the ad. ;) :D

So its a Tab killer because it has the precious 10" screen?

Reading compression in order...
Try again:
What I wrote: "I'm no expert on what works in TV ads, and I believe anyone who claims they are are frauds. We know better what doesn't work."

Its a Tab killer for 2 reasons- One, the Tab is the last big deal in Android Tablets and its time has expired. :) Second, As an Android tablet, Xoom ( Motrola) competes with Tab Samsung. Same as Acer competes with Dell. ipAD is Apple and has a huge head start in the tablet market share. The only thing that will stop Apple's iPAD now is is Apple screws up.



I watched the spot which I think was a 60, not a 30. Anyway, I agree it is not obvious it was trying to reference ipad owners. The actual reference to the Xoom was very short. Here's what to watch for- They will probably use the same theme and footage to build several 30's but much less time and then tag into it a brief expose of something the Xoom has that the ipad doesn't but that will happen after ipad 2 feature-set is announced. If I were doing this, that's what I would do. Plus, the babe who removes the ear bud in the first spot, needs to take the Xoom from the guy and look at it briefly and break into a big smile. This is an episodic theme spot series and is often done with big budgets. My only concern is that to date all things android have very short life spans as they are replaced by something better in a few weeks. In other words, even the Xoom will be short lived.
 
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Neither the original 1983 Apple computer "1984" ad nor this ad had anything to do with the themes explored in "1984".
 
Neither the original 1983 Apple computer "1984" ad nor this ad had anything to do with the themes explored in "1984".
It took the watching public 27 years to realize that 1984 is not just a random number in those ads.
You don't expect them to actually know the story, do you? :)
Especially with such a non-American ending...

Diogen.
 
I didn't think the ad was any great shakes either. Too little about the Xoom itself. But beyond the ad, there is a serious issue with the cost. $800 plus a data plan! That doesn't make an iPad killer at all, maybe not even a Tab killer.
 
I typed this? "Reading compression in order..."

Well, I do hope the Xoom has a better spell checker than the ipad. LOL!

I thought I typed comprehension.

For those who don't own an ipad, the ipad will often change a correctly spelled word with another it thinks you meant. Sometimes the results are funny.
 

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