The folks at Palm may think they’ve learned how to make some creepy commercials, but let’s face it, they’ve got nothing on Sony. The Japanese company has a long history of discomforting, unexplainable advertising that rivals a David Lynch movie — in fact, Lynch even directed his own television spot back in the PlayStation 2 days, itself reminiscent of UNKLE’s “Rabbit in Your Headlights” music video from years before. This latest set of videos for the PS3 Slim in Japan is no exception. Turn off all the lights, raise the volume of your speakers, and bow down before the masters of unnerving gadget promotion just after the break — we included the Lynch ad, too, in case you were interested.
Holy moly. We thought Sprint’s ad explicitly targeting iPhone customers was a desperate move. But Canadian carrier Bell’s TV commercial for the Pre wins first place for the nipping-at-Apple’s-heels contest. It looks so much like Apple’s iPhone TV ads that you’ll think it’s a joke. Nope, it’s real, and after you’re done laughing it’s actually kind of sad.
Far from being creepy this time around, the latest Palm Pre ad — this one specifically for Bell’s Canadian customer base — is familiar. Very familiar. Plain white backdrop? Check. Peppy male narrator? Check. Hip, upbeat music? Check. Mysterious hands showing off mobile apps and other smartphone capabilities? Check. Side-by-side comparison videos after the break. Hey, at least this one isn’t gonna creep you out.
Update: Looks like someone read our minds and spliced the commercial with Orba Squara’s infamous “Perfect Timing” found in the iPhone ads. Video’s after the break.
Each day I get a little bit sadder that Billy Mays is no longer with us. Good thing there are so many spokeassholes vying for position in the marketing pantheon.
UPDATE: Looks like there was a late entry to our list of current top spokesassholes: Miss Julia Allison has just signed a yearlong deal to peddle Sony’s wares. About time that her attention-whoring went global! [Sony Insider via Gawker]
Some of us were near tears when T-Mobile decided to drop Zeta-Jones as their official spokesasshole, but the good news is that she’s back. The bad news is that as soon as we heard her nerve-grinding accent, we remembered that those were tears of joy.
It was difficult to deem Sir Richard Branson as a spokesasshole. He is such a nice man and only wants innovative technology to reach those from “all walks of life”—assuming that they make $40 million annually, of course.
Lisa, Lauren, and Giampaolo are the biggest spokesassholes in the Laptop Hunters commercials. Lisa shatters eardrums with her exclamation of “WhaaaaAAAAaat?!?!”, Lauren followed the ads up with claims that they were unscripted, and Giampaolo is just plain smarmy.
Maybe one day he’ll button up the shirt and put on some sunglasses that don’t look like they’re his girlfriend’s. I hope he didn’t quit his day job (waiter? male prostitute?) when he landed this gig, because it won’t last long.
Verizon Probably Only Merged With Alltel To Get Rid of Chad
Verizon and Alltel may have merged, but we’ve still seen Chad’s picture looming around Alltel’s website. With his spiky blonde hair, laid back walk, and inability to take a hint, he’s a true menagerie of what this gallery represents.
Zune Spokesasshole Wes Moss nearly broke our douche point scale. If you can stand watching this Zune spot, after those Laptop Hunter ads, you’ll see why.
Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine are two ridiculously wealthy guys who decide, in their spare time, to become even more wealthy by peddling some overpriced headphones. Even if you ignore the fact that they’re distributed by Monster, and even if you admit that the headphones aren’t that bad—there’s no way the duo can’t escape the spokesasshole brand.
It’s not much of a secret that some of us here are Apple fans, but not even that stopped us from pronouncing Apple’s “I’m a Mac” guy and his smug attitude and thinly veiled disdain for PC as spokesasshole material.
Tamara Hope in the Return of the Stoner Commercials
The Palm Pre commercials started off terribly and only got worse until we stepped in with a remix. Though since it seems that Palm was really giving a nod to Ellen Feiss of Mac Switcher fame with these creepy “What is she on and where can I get some?” commercials, we’ll only rate actress Tamara Hope as half a spokesasshole.
We can forgive Michael Bay for not sharing video footage of Megan Fox washing his car, since he at least had her show a bit of skin in Transformers 2. What we can’t forgive him for his display of spokesassholery in this pitch for Verizon FiOS. By the fifth “AWESOME!” things turn from funny to “Please walk into the next exploding building, Michael.”
You’ve got to hand it to Kutcher. The man with a million Twitter sheep has risen from underwear model to annoying spokesasshole and GI Jane toy-boy. Though we can’t help but see Kelso every time he’s fumbling around on screen.
Having created an aura of surreal creepiness around its handset, Palm seems ready to talk about the Pre’s features (not just its feelings) in its latest video ad. Whether the change is in response to viewer unrest or a natural progression of the advertising campaign is unknown. But if princess waiffy pants could send a calendar late notification while pulling into a downward facing dog, well, that would be an ad worth watching. Maybe next time. Check the latest after the break.
OK, really. How do these people even get jobs in advertising? First there was Microsoft’s repulsive “Oh My God I’m Gonna Puke” ad for Internet Explorer 8. Now there’s Micro-Star International’s ad involving dudes heaving laptops into each other’s butt cracks. We get the point: Your notebooks are thin. But really now. Don’t do anything like this ever again — no ifs, ands or butts about it.
The latest crop of Palm Pre ads may not be a favorite among some viewers but it does achieve its purpose of getting consumers to talk about the product, says Gary Koepke, co-founder and executive creative director at Modernista, the agency behind the Pre ads. So mission accomplished, says Koepke in an interview with Ad Age.
“The Pre is probably being talked about more than other phones right now because of the marketing and advertising, and that’s a good thing,” says Koepke. “Could the ads work harder to show exactly how the phone works? Yes, but we knew it would be polarizing people to have a woman not shout at them and tell an interesting story.”
Palm’s recent TV commercials featuring a glowing actress, Tamara Hope, speaking in what is supposed to be a soothing voice about the product’s features. The idea is to find the middle ground between the Apple iPhone commercial that showcases the phone and its apps without having a real person in the ad and the ‘life on BlackBerry‘ ads, says Koepke. But the television spot has riled up bloggers for being “creepy.” The ad has also inspired a few YouTube parodies.
Palm has shown no signs that it wants to pull the plug on the ads so it is likely the company is happy with it. Now whether all this buzz has translated into Pre sales is something we won’t know until Palm and Sprint release their quarterly earnings next month. So far, the two companies have not commented about the number of Pre phones sold since the device’s launch on June 6.
What do you think of the Pre ad? Let us know in the comments.
For this week’s Photoshop Contest, you created a bunch of ads for decidedly-unsexy gadgets that use our basest instincts to draw us in. And you know what? Some of these are better than real ads that are out there.
When we last saw this fair-faced Pre spokesperson, she was sitting on a rock in an otherwise open field playing choreagrapher to a sea of robed individuals encircling her. This latest ad takes a decidedly simpler approach reminiscent of the vibe set in the Meet the Pre series, though we can’t say for sure her if her followers aren’t just waiting off-camera for the next directive. Also, interesting choice of onomatopoeia for sliding through the webOS cards, we imagine there’s a certain, Redmond-based company out there delighted by the subtle (and probably unintentional) reference. See the ad for yourself after the break — and in case you’re wondering, that song that’ll be stuck in your head all day is “Doot Doot” by Freur.
With just over a fortnight to go before Sprint starts selling Palm’s Pre, it stands to reason that a few of the units have made their way out into the wild. According to Millennial Media, that’s absolutely what has happened, with this month marking the first in which it recorded “initial Palm Pre [ad] impressions.” In other words, those lucky few Pre owners (or “testers,” if you will) are really just goofing off online rather than testing tactility and radiation output. Good to know.
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