Who are the ad wizards who came up with this one?

So if you've been watching televised sports since around the World Series last month (and to a lesser extent whatever constitutes prime time network television sans writers), you must have been exposed to the latest slew of ads for Apple's newest breakthrough in portable MP3 field, the iPod Touch. It's youthful, hip, sexy, infinitely catchy, and of course unavoidably ubiquitous. On the surface it's essentially the same type of advertising that I condemned Apple Marketing for in my open letter concerning the iPod Nano a few months back. I should hate it, but for me it's actually an improvement over the iPod Nano commercials.

The main improvement with this new ad goes to really the crux of the problem I had with the old ad, frequency. I don't have any quantifiable data on the issue, nor have I done an official study but it seems that Apple got the message that repeating the same commercial, regardless of how cool and interesting and ascetically pleasing they feel it is, is a terrible, outdated way of marketing that may possibly hurt the product image in the long run. Granted, I am watching somewhat less TV than I was in late September due to the mediocre play of the Buffalo Bills and the lack of new Office episodes; but definitely not less enough for it to be a significant factor. I think the ad has reached that healthy medium where it's a frequent visitor to your home but isn't taxing your patience, a fine line to walk.

On a purely subjective level I just like the Touch ad better than the Nano ad. I was getting tired of the white background, kinda quirky, Apple ads. It's a great look, no doubt, but it just made the commercial seem sort of repetitive on the first viewing. It was a new ad but it went with whole general scheme of Apple ads; instead of Jeff Goldblum and stoned teenagers telling me to switch or Justin Long ragging on John Hodgman, it was the iPod Nano doing it's thing. The new commercial wasn't groundbreakingly innovative or spectacular but it was a refreshing difference from the norm that I noticed and appreciated. I also liked Cansei De Ser Sexy's "Music is my Hot Hot Sex" (title alone is superior) to Fiest's "1234". If the strength of marketing can propel "1234" to a peak of number freakin' 8 on the Hot 100, I'd like to see how far ad wizardry can propel an obscure Brazilian indie band. According to wikipedia the song has so far hit #63, the highest charting single by a Brazilian band in the history of the chart (what no Sergio Mendes?).

And just how did the highly paid marketing wizards at Apple manage to come up with this new and improved commercial? Simple, they just used the ideas of "unqualified" advertising minds like myself. The new direction, the great choice of song, the new presentation that was so noticeably different from the previous million dollar ads? It was basically a polished up version of a home video made by a teenager. What other industry is there in the world where a guy off the street can do just as good or better of a job than its most skilled and experienced specialists? And here I am in law school.

Interestingly enough, the real winner in all this may be Canadian singer/songwriter/Avril Lavigne clone Skye Sweetnam whose song "Music is My Boyfriend" has no doubt attracted the attention of many misguided searchers.