Obama takes on the icons

Just found this video, which I think has probably been around for a while now (it aired during this year’s Superbowl). Barack Obama’s campaign against Hilary Clinton in the US Democratic primaries looks set to be a scorcher…

The ad is a reworking of the classic Apple ‘1984’ ad, which aired (in 1984) in the middle of the Superbowl, and is widely held to be one of the greatest ads ever made in terms of it’s effects on public perception of the brand. That we still consider Apple computers to be ‘creative’, ‘anti-establishment’ and ‘different’ is testament to how effective it was. In reality of course, they’re nothing of the sort, just a bundle of chips same as any other, except more expensively priced and used by geeks with pretensions to creativity (like me). But imagery like this really helped them to establish themselves as something different.

Incidentally, the latest Apple ad, featuring the chaps from Peep Show, actually seems to be having a negative effect on their brand perception (according to BrandIndex). Probably due to the fact everyone knows the ‘Mac’ character is overly smug and conceited in the TV show… they ran the same ad in the US, but with non-celebrities, and it went down very well, but I think they might not have fully considered the implications of using the Peep Show characters…

Anyway, back to the Obama ad. As well as ripping off Apple’s ad, and even bastardising their logo at the end of the reel, it’s amazing that the only significant change they chose to make to any of the actors (aside from the inclusion of Hilary Clinton) was to CGI an iPod onto the ‘freedom fighter’. Apparently, in the last 23 years that single item is most representative of our new found digital freedom, or something. Either that, or Obama was just trying to be down with ‘the kids’.

Either way, it’s a great ad.