Apple's Santa TV spot deemed best ad of holiday season - Page 2

True.

The only problem I have with this commercial is strictly technical. Every time I see it I think it's obvious that there should have been between 0.5 and 1.0 seconds longer pause before the punchline at the end. That, and that alone seems like a tiny "error" to me that Steve Jobs wouldn't have let go by.

The fact that it wasn't caught worries me a teeny-tiny bit as it's generally the commercials for a company that are the bell weather indicators of change. We should expect that if Apple "goes downhill" after Steve Jobs to some degree that we'd see it in the commercials first.

For many years, Apple seemed to have lost its sense of humor and self-deprication that had made it lovable. It tried so hard to be "important". This was the first volley of bringing fun back into Apple, WELL DONE! This ad was funny and very timely to their products.

Working on a reply to this difficult problem you present, nvidia2008. Meanwhile, merry Christmas.

I'm not sure what the complaint is. Yes, the actions are technical, but the entire mood is decidedly not.


True, but there are few markets where any individual Samsung phone outsells the iPhone.

Yes, to some degree we all know that Apple is now on cruise-control. A lot of what they are doing is carrying on the momentum. I don't think however that this precludes(?) innovation without Steve Jobs. In the biography Steve was on a hospital bed when he first tried out Siri. It sounded that a lot of it was done without his direct input due to his health by that stage.

Steve said that he also wanted to innovate in how to build a company that lasted "like HP". So the groundwork and the activity at Apple is there to carry on. I think Apple will be in the "sweet spot" 2012-2015. Whereby there should be a nice balance between Steve and others' visions coming to fruition while Apple having a little bit more suppleness without Steve's hard style. Post 2015 will be interesting.

Cheers...! *brofist*



Cheers...! I'm glad I'm not the only one that instantly wondered at what 3.7 billion meant.

<off topic, indulge me this one post>
Another gem from last night's Christmas party (you can tell I had such a woooonderfulll time)...

From a Christian... "Oh, well, you know, it's cancer, unless there's some miraculous healing, well..."

U R CHRISTIAN, Y U NO BELIEVE THERE IS GOOD POSSIBILITY OF MIRACULOUS HEALING???

Again, surprise, surprise, this is the wife of the guy I'm complaining about in the other thread. Two peas in a f*ed up pod. Another gem from this lady... Me: "So, do you know so-and-so from the same university you both are working at? She's in blah-blah department". She: "Oh, the only people I deal with at that department are the Executive Dean and Dean". A simple "no" would have sufficed.

PS. The pope didn't look too good yesterday. I had to change the channel, he had a kind of "OMFG I'm going to die I hope there's Heaven" look on his face as he slowly shuffled along in whatever ceremony it was. Yes, call me a Grinch, but no wonder the holiday season is fraught with contemplations as well as concern at times. I wonder if in time Christmas lingerie will be banned in certain locations around the world, if it hasn't already.
</off topic>

Indeed, in hindsight Mac vs PC was pertinent but a tad too serious. iPhone and iPad continue to look to be more Blue Ocean than the PC Red Ocean, and the ads reflect that.

In Steve's bio he did complain about some of the iPhone and iPad ads looking too "Pottery Barn" and "typical agency crap" or something like that.

This Santa ad definitely is one of the high points of Apple advertising.

[QUOTE=nvidia2008;2014265]I'm curious about the 3.7 billion number. Is that Christians? Or kids? Or good kids? Or kids he hasn't visited yet? Yeah my left brain is overdeveloped in some aspects.

Maybe this isn't the only planet that Santa delievers on?

Nice.

Of course.

It's amazing how the haters can find something to criticize in ANYTHING Apple does. When Apple was doing the "I'm a Mac" ads, they whined about how it was negative and you shouldn't be talking about your competition but should rather show of the features of your product. So Apple does the Santa ad and doesn't say a word about the competition and shows one of their product's features in 'use' and the haters attack them for that.

There is no one 'correct' advertising strategy. Apple has a fairly long record of successful ad programs - "Think Different", "I'm a Mac", and now Siri. The fact that all three were significantly different is a plus, not a minus.

I think what's important to note as well is that Apple's sales are not as ad-driven as many other companies. So many other brands are literally tied into all kinds of advertising. Apple's core advertising is the product itself.

Decent ad, but Christmas is gone and the ad should be, too.

It is? Many people celebrate Christmas on days other than Dec 25 (including many Americans who come from non-Western European cultures):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas

Besides that, even for people who celebrate Christmas on Dec 25, the holiday actually extends beyond that. I know a LOT of people who take advantage of the after-Christmas sales and consider that to be part of the holiday. Running the ad for a few extra days may pick up some of the "what do I do with my Christmas money?" crowd.

[QUOTE=TheShepherd;2014431]
This is a fetching idea, though on the surface no mythic figure could seem to be more Earthly than the red-and-white-frocked Spirit of the year's end. The theories that he embodies Saturnalian feasts on the Amanita muscaria mushroom, itself clothed like Santa and able to induce good shamans and their reindeer to "fly," should be taken very seriously, as accurate festal lore and as anthropology.

Terence McKenna and maybe his brother Dennis had one great idea (among many others) that mushroom spores could survive interplanetary travel in comets or meteorites, just as some theories say amino acids could have traveled. So there may be jolly trickster mushroom figures on other planets who dress up in red and white.

The present secularization of Christmas is a healthy return to its magico-mythic roots in Mithraism and the other dying-and-resurrecting gods and their mystery festal systems: Osiris, Adonis, Tammuz, Dionysus, and finally, this Jeshua character, who seems to have valiantly tried to restore the ancent mystery tradition of seeking "the heaven within." No wonder they did him in. He would have made priests and their religions obsolete. The theft of the solstice Saturnalias in his name was an attempt to bury the real tradition of ecstatic initiation that stretched back at least 30,000 years.

Now we have another chance, with knowledge and massively connected world communication. I think 3.7B is the estimate of the desired critical mass of pocketed computers. Merry Yuletide. Ho ho ho.

References: Soma by Gordon Wasson, Food for Centaurs by Robert Graves, Supernatural by Graham Hancock, and Mushroms, Myth and Mithras by Ruck, Hoffman and González Celdrán, just recently published. Also The Archaic Revival, by Terence McKenna, for starters.

If Apple lags behind on anything you can bet it's for a good reason. 4G phone service is hardly ubiquitous. It drains your battery. If another phone touts their 'faster processor' i would bet it's because their GPU is slower. I trust Apple as a brand. I would rather buy what they come up with as the sweet spot and get something that has an overall great performance at a reasonable if a little expensive price. Apple makes a profit and keeps on producing great stuff.

One thing I can't wait for is a 3rd party siri API. You can bet that's coming in iOS 6.

"Siri, Shazam this song"
"The song playing is <whatever>"

"Siri, give me directions to the airport in TomTom"
<TomToms opens and starts barking directions at you>

"Siri, who is such and such?"
"I found <such and such> on Facebook. You have 3 friends in common. Would you like to: Send a message, add as a friend, etc?"

I really wish people would stop tossing around "4G" like it means anything. It's a BS marketing term.

If you want to quote something meaningful, quote real world upload/download speeds. AT&T is perfectly within their rights to call HSPA+ "4G" since it's faster than the majority of the Verizon "4G" out there in the real world

Lipstick on a pig and all that....