

This is how you pitch a new piece of technology.  - wherespaul
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2bLNkCqpuY
Here is another motivational thread on HN:
Ask HN: Movies that motivate you?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1349566<p>I just watched the first episode of Mad Men and I'm hooked.
======
clemesha
Google's "Parisian Love" ad is an extremely potent, real world example of
using similar emotions to sell a product:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU>

~~~
arvinjoar
Wow, I loved that, I even tried creating a Google story that I hope will one
day be my story. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE4Zh7XXUO4>

~~~
ArcticCelt
I did a follow up story ;)

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rndTuXG51kI>

~~~
SkyMarshal
Rofl

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pvg
This is more about how to make a good TV show. He's not really pitching a new
piece of technology at all. He's pitching an ad campaign, which in turn is
about introducing consumers to a new piece of technology. The scene is so good
that you fall for the campaign too.

It's a great way to learn something about pitching if you look like Don
Draper, have a product that good (the carousel campaign) and you're an actor
in a well-written, hit TV show.

~~~
dieterrams
> He's not really pitching a new piece of technology at all. He's pitching an
> ad campaign, which in turn is about introducing consumers to a new piece of
> technology.

You seem to be getting hung up on the fact that Draper isn't actually a
startup founder pitching his own product to investors. That's almost
completely irrelevant. He is definitely pitching the product. In this case, he
simply happens to be pitching the product back to the company who made it.

Pitching and advertising, while they have their differences, are fundamentally
about the same thing: getting people to believe a product can make their lives
better. If, in addition to tossing out numbers, you can make your potential
investors believe you know how to connect with your market and truly
understand their needs, so much the better. It doesn't have to be in tear-
jerker form like Draper's presentation: it's about knowing how to frame the
product.

And sure, it's a TV show, but it happens to be a fairly exceptional TV show
built on a great deal of wisdom about what makes people tick. Don't throw the
baby out with the bathwater.

~~~
pvg
No, he is not pitching the product. He's pitching the campaign. The TV show is
great. Pitching and advertising are not the same thing and pitching is
certainly not about getting people to believe a product can make their lives
better, at least not in the most common cases HN readers are likely to
encounter. The title 'this is how to pitch a new technology' is fairly silly.
I think all of these are either obvious facts or trivial arguments and that's
all I've stated and now you're telling me I'm hung up on something that I
never even mentioned (startup founders pitching to investors). Now, if you
want to draw pitching wisdom from this clip, terrific. But if you want to
respond to me, respond to claims I've made instead of ones you said I've made,
but didn't.

~~~
dieterrams
> No, he is not pitching the product. He's pitching the campaign.

You're insisting there's mutual exclusion where it doesn't exist.

> But if you want to respond to me, respond to claims I've made instead of
> ones you said I've made, but didn't.

I pretty clearly used the words "you seem", as in, "this is what I think
you're thinking." I'm not a mind reader, so I'm forced to make a guess. Based
on your other comments, it seemed like a pretty reasonable one to me.

By the way, pitching in its everyday usage just means to sell someone on
something, whether it's customers or investors. (Notice how salesmen are often
described as making a "sales pitch".) Advertising is a special form of
pitching to customers. Pitching in the entrepreneurial sense of talking to a
roomful of investors is also a special form of pitching.

This is a YCombinator site, so when someone mentions pitching, there's a good
chance they mean talking to a roomful of investors. But a lot of us also talk
about pitching to customers.

Either way, I think the clip offers some insight in how to do both, even if
it's exaggerated for dramatic effect.

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dasht
One thing to keep in mind is that it's "just a TV show" and that it has the
benefit of hindsight. They can look back at history and find the great (or the
disastrous) ad campaigns and riff on those. They make it look like Draper (the
pitchman in that clip) just knocks out those hits with just a few hours of
brooding between sessions of drinking and screwing and being bad towards his
wife. In real life, its a lot more random and not so easy.

~~~
pedalpete
I think you're missing the point. The point is that the technology isn't about
the things, it's about the people and how it affects your life.

Nobody cares that the carousel is a wheel. Just like nobody cares that your
phone has a 1gz processor, or that your display has 1080dpi. It's that a 1gz
processor makes animations smoother or programs run faster so you can get
things done. The 1080dpi is so that you can see your photos or video in life-
like quality.

~~~
seancron
I think you mean 1080p, seeing as the iPhone 4's "retina display" is only 326
dpi.

Although I'd imagine a 1080dpi screen would look quite life-like.

~~~
pedalpete
yes, that is what I meant, though at the same time, the confusion in
technology I think further proves the point.

------
drewcrawford
This reminded me a lot of the iPhone 4 ad, just fifty years old. It's not
about the 1ghz processor or the 512mb of ram, it's about the value of the
experiences you have using it.

~~~
masklinn
or the other way around, the iPhone (FaceTime) ads are built around the same
structure and the idea of playing hearts like a fiddle. Except where the
carousel brings backs the past, FaceTime gives you the present.

------
wherespaul
Here is another motivational thread on HN: Ask HN: Movies that motivate you?
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1349566>

I just watched the first episode of Mad Men and I'm hooked.

~~~
jm3
Mad Men has great lessons in the art of the high-concept pitch: giving the
listener a compelling vision rather than being constrained to a conversation
about sales numbers or product features. Funding a startup (or buying an ad
campaign) should make the person writing the check want to tell everyone they
know that the smart investment they just made is going to make the world a
better place, not that they're going to beat the competition by x.y%.

aside: bought the Mad Men three-season box set to catch up before the upcoming
season 4, but didn't realize I got a Chinese bootleg; producer's listed as
Linsgate (sic), not Lionsgate. :)

~~~
astrodust
Here I was hoping for "Loinsgate".

------
Scott_MacGregor
If you guys are fans of Don Draper, here is the real life Don Draper, a guy
named Steve Frankfurt: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjDSqQmcc90>

~~~
wherespaul
Scott great find! The intro is long so here is a link that cuts to the good
stuff: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjDSqQmcc90#t=1m05s>

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shahin
you mean having dramatic background music played while pitching? ;)

~~~
erikstarck
Actually, Mad Men uses extremely little background music. In this sequence
it's there, but very subtle.

------
ek
I was going to try to find a YouTube clip of it, but I couldn't, so let me
just recommend The IT Crowd episode 2.5, in which Moss invents the best bra
ever known, except for a few fatal flaws which cause their pitch at the end of
the episode to fail miserably.

~~~
fragmede
Do you mean this one? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoPbMMzrLss#t=2m21s>

~~~
ek
Yes. I laughed very hard when it caught on fire.

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watmough
That's an incredible scene, and you can clearly see that the FaceTime ads for
the iPhone 4 are in the same 'genre'.

FaceTime allows people who are separated, perhaps on different continents, or
across generations to re-connect, and share important moments, like the birth
of a child, or the slings and arrows of adolescence.

Just like Draper says in the scene, the technology just has to work and get
out of the way. The human experience is the important part.

------
akkartik
Recently I found apple's facetime ads to be super effective. I'm never buying
the iPhone 4 (or perhaps any successor) but man I want that app.

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sjtgraham
I wouldn't be surprised if this clip was circulated internally at Apple and
within the creative agency responsible for FaceTime during that campaign's
concept stage. This approach is classic Apple, i.e. highlight and focus on the
benefits instead of the features.

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tzm
Watch "Art and Copy". A poignant reflection and reminder of why advertising is
important.

------
chewyrunt
This reminded me of the Philips ad 'Carousel' (related only by its name, and
that it also happens to be an excellent ad):

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ3D4CqHbJM>

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messel
So remembering who that's important, not what or how.

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hackermom
I believe the first rule for pitching a piece of "technology" is to repeatedly
refer to it as "new" "technology", despite it being neither new nor
technology. It's the new buzz.

In other news, blacksmith creates horseshoe with hammer and anvil
"technology".

------
latch
Probably obvious from the clip, but for those who don't watch the show, he's
fairly recently "lost" his family due to being a jerk (with respect to being a
father/husband).

~~~
delano

        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
        spoiler alert

