A dWeek, a print magazine that describes itself as being "edited for the advertising executive," has published an editorial painting a very favorable look at Appleis iTunes Music Store (iMS) TV commercials. According to Barbara Lippert, Apple is tapping into some basic associative techniques in the spots, and does so well. In the process, she also calls the iMS a "great new, cheap service." Fro the article:
On the surface, these commercials seem so basic, like "Switchers" but without all the angst and the tics. Those also featured people standing against white space. (Do Apple and the Gap each own half of the white-space trademark?) But "Switchers" sold the big-ticket items and featured real people and their tech stories, full of PC fury. Here, the song is the story, and the spots promote a great new, cheap service (the online music store provides the first digital delivery sanctioned by all the major record labels, allowing users to choose from 200,000 tracks). So this campaign is much more fun. Itis not as simple as it looks, though, and thatis one of the reasons itis so good.
Music is a potent memory jogger -- up there with certain Proust-like smells. So just as this campaign sells individual songs for individual tastes, it also effortlessly targets different segments and demos, and moves Apple into a whole new mind space.
The full article goes on to look at some of the specific spots, with more commentary to go along with that.