

The power of Apple's FaceTime commercial - gvb
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/10/apple-facetime-commercial/

======
stcredzero
I'm not sure what it is about this commercial, but when I see it, I start
thinking about mortality and the ephemeral nature of life. According to the
article, the Greek roots of "nostaligia" mean "an old wound." I think that's
very appropriate. I get the same background feeling from this commercial that
I get from watching the first part of Pixar's "Up." I'd love to see a
cinematographer's analysis of both of those pieces.

~~~
wallflower
EDIT: Fixed recursion

Up! Director Peter Docter's interview on the "Married Life" scene:

"From a "feel" standpoint, it was the sense of a life lived, and not only the
highs, but the lows. That's why we put in a couple of dark moments... It
actually feels more real, and I think that's how you remember life being
like."

"Strangely, we got a couple of home movies from the Internet -- Michael
Giacchino has a collection that I think he ordered from EBay. And we had no
idea who the people in them were, but we'd watch their lives progress and
piece them together -- we'd note, "Oh, now there's a new kid in the picture.
And what happened to that person? I guess they must've moved away." It was
strangely compelling."

[http://theenvelope.latimes.com/news/la-etw-pete-
docter25-201...](http://theenvelope.latimes.com/news/la-etw-pete-
docter25-2010feb25,0,2207449.story)

Interesting and weird academic view on Sam Mendes' FaceTime ad:

"Distance, work, and duty separate these individuals from their primary
relationships, but, the film implies, the phone can mediate these
contingencies and keep users connected to life's truly important moments."

"But the phone, in turn, obscures these flows and systems to the extent that
it mediates between them and the relationships of its users as an object
allowing for immediate emotional interconnectivity."

[http://mwnau.posterous.com/absence-mediation-and-
emotional-o...](http://mwnau.posterous.com/absence-mediation-and-emotional-
objectssam-me/)

~~~
AndyKelley
that last link you gave is the OP ;)

~~~
wallflower
Got so caught up in Googling and reading pre-game World Cup analysis. Duh!

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carterschonwald
those who are looking at these comments but haven't seen the ad yet, please do
so. Irrespective of its marketing merit, its amazingly well done.

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jonknee
I've seen it on at bars and heard it openly mocked--the scenarios in the
commercial are so narrow that it can easily make it look useless (or
unrealistic like the soldier overseas who not only has an iPhone 4 but access
to high-speed WiFi without a firewall).

Save for deaf people and gadget reviewers, few people want to see each other
during phone calls on a regular basis. At the same time millions of people
want to IM each other, but they haven't built that in yet.

~~~
adamesque
There's nothing in the commercial, actually, that depicts ordinary, routine
phone calls. They're intimate conversations between people with deep
relationships to each other, who are separated and cannot be together –
sometimes at critical, god-I-wish-I-had-a-teleporter moments.

If you've felt the kind of deep longing that sort of separation can cause,
you'll immediately understand what Apple is selling here. A lifeline to the
ones you love.

Believe me, at those moments there's not a chance you'd rather just be on IM.

~~~
edderly
"critical" moments?

Not really. I think most people would argue as social animals that being
physically present at an event underlines the importance and respect for
others. No one sane dials into someone's wedding or funeral right?

For me that's why only the opening sequence of the advert worked - keeping in
visual contact with your child. The deaf conversation is thrown in as a
calculated validation of the goodness of FaceTime, given this, what cold soul
could not understand the importance of this technology?

I'm sure medical staff are buzzing with anticipation about their future
arguments with hipsters trying to use their phones in scanning units where
such devices are usually prohibited.

~~~
skybrian
A video phone isn't for routine phone calls or for marriages or funerals, but
there are lots of family events in the middle. It's common for relatives to
sometimes be unable to show up for birthdays or Christmas. I have an aunt who
bought a video phone to do that when she's in Florida.

~~~
edderly
I agree but I think the criticisms which are being made here are about the
inherent mediocrity of FaceTime and whether it's either original or essential.

The advert is clever in that the only good uses bookend the less good ones.
You can't blame them, because you hardly want to sell FaceTime as 'FaceTime:
For when you can't be arsed to turn up'

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gvb
There is an interesting and applicable point made in "The American Gustation
Crisis of 1985" [http://www.damninteresting.com/the-american-gustation-
crisis...](http://www.damninteresting.com/the-american-gustation-crisis-
of-1985) (aka. How Coca-Cola won the war).

 _In retrospect, some marketers believe that the failure of New Coke may have
had something to do with sensation transference, a human oddity first
described by Louis Cheskin in the 1940s._
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Cheskin#Sensation_transfe...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Cheskin#Sensation_transference)
_Cheskin demonstrated that people will unconsciously associate imagery,
sounds, tastes, aromas, and textures into their general impression of a
product, even if such associations are unintended or inaccurate._

What Apple is doing with the commercial, as pointed out by MG Siegler, is
using our emotions, specifically our love of our family and friends, to the
iPhone, associating that emotion and love _to_ the iPhone. Powerful. Scary.

~~~
c1sc0
Powerful? Scary? Great advertising you mean! The shared history between ad men
& propaganda men is a very fascinating one. Effective advertising is like
hacking the human psyche.

~~~
Ceno
No, he actually means powerful and scary, in this kind of realization that we,
our feelings, our inclinations, our rationality, our subconscious can be
accessed and manipulated at will by 60 seconds of video.

Ever since I watched "the century of the self" I can't help but feeling
utterly repulsed and violated by marketing in general. And watching the recent
apple marketing, is like watching the master puppeteer at work

------
eli
I've had video chat on my laptop for years, yet hardly ever use it. Further,
if I'm near free WiFi, I'm usually near my laptop too. I suspect most people
are the same way.

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robryan
What is the reason they're restricting this to wifi? Would the quality be to
low on a 3g network? The only mobile video call I used probably over 5 years
ago used a 3g(I assume, definitely not wifi) connection, sure the quality
wasn't amazing, but would this still be an issue in built up areas?

~~~
jonursenbach
AT&T is the reason.

~~~
robryan
I guess it's a software limitation at the moment. I doubt carriers in
Australia would go down the same path given the choice.

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axod
The commercial is well done (It pulls lots of heart strings for some people),
but it's ridiculous to assume those are the main use cases. 90% use will be
for remote sex. But knowing Apple they'll probably detect nude flesh and
censor it ;)

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amichail
The only Apple ad that affected me on an emotional level is Think Different.
In fact, it's the best commercial I've ever seen.

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amichail
A suggestion to solve the bandwidth and privacy issues for video chat: why not
have an avatar whose facial expressions are determined from your facial
expressions in real-time?

~~~
jacobolus
There’s a bit of Dave Foster Wallace’s ''Infinite Jest'' that talks about
precisely this, in considerably more detail, and quite amusingly.

Link: [http://www.martin-brown.net/downloads/DavidFosterWallace-
Inf...](http://www.martin-brown.net/downloads/DavidFosterWallace-InfiniteJest-
Telephony.pdf)

------
mattmcknight
What's the reach of this ad? I've never seen it. Are they getting tech writers
to review the ad itself in an attempt to make people that don't watch TV
commercials see it?

~~~
krschultz
Actually pretty wide, I barely see any TV and I have seen it a several times.
It has been about for about a week as far as I can tell.

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lwhi
Well, I'm sure Don Draper - the sociopathic lead from Mad Men - _could_ have
created this advert. It bypasses the mundane nature of the technology, and
shows the human benefit. It's sugar coated, and perhaps too schmaltzy for a UK
audience, but I can see why it works.

Unfortunately - in keeping with the work of all sociopathic ad-men - reality
has been distorted. This isn't real life, it's fantasy. For a start, a lot of
the actors are 'holding it wrong'.

~~~
elai
_Spoliers_

Draper isn't really sociopathic, you'd notice he's a lot more relaxed when he
is with the original mrs.draper, and pretty much any sort of flashback
sequence before his current job and marital situation. He is constantly living
a lie and must put up a conscious pretense. He feels very guilty about what he
done, and as a result he is constantly tense and always having few words and
choosing them carefully.

~~~
lwhi
(... in your opinion.)

 _spoilers_

Don Draper chooses to lie, he chooses to monopolize on his ability to deceive
and he steadfastly places to his own whims above all others. He's manipulative
and cunning. He believes he has the right to pay people off to get his own
way. He's incredibly secretive - leading double (in some cases, triple lives).
He has no true friendships and while he occasionally wrestles with morality,
actually cares very little about the majority of those around him. The one
person who is closest to a friend (Peggy) has been treated ridiculously badly
at times. He fears virtually no situation and has a tendancy to act rashly. He
enjoys and seeks out dangerous / risky situations.

Black and white can't be used to paint a full picture, and occasionally his
character shows traits which describe another side to his personality. Even
so, his character would certainly fit the standard definition of a sociopath /
narcissist.

It just happens that the attributes Don Draper has been ascribed, also align
with western society's view of 'the perfect man'; which is quite telling
itself.

Down-voting based on a difference in opinion would be a little bit Draper-like
;)

~~~
aaronblohowiak
nit-pick: you are right that he is a narcissist, but due to his apparent
capacity for empathy, he is not a sociopath in the clinical sense. That he
chooses to disregard this and place himself first above all else in order to
preserve his own sense of inner comfort makes him a narcissist.

~~~
lwhi
If the advertising industry could be personified, I'm sure the resulting
person would lack real empathy - within the industry, empathy is only used as
a device to provide people with what they require.

I think the fact Don Draper's character has been written in this way is the
crowning glory of Man Men; showing how the modern world has been defined by
people who are built a certain way - and showing how the dawn of the
advertising industry was pivotal in shaping the world as it is now.

