Something I've noticed that seems to be a recurring theme in the iPod/iPhone ads over the last couple of years is what I'm going to call "the iPod Swipe".
It's that smooth, confident move of the hand that move an iPod across the screen, either to clip it to your clothes or to whisk it off-screen:
Looking at the ads by competitors (usually cellphone ads these days), the hands just don't move the same way. They move a lot more like real person hands do, somehow, but they just don't look cool, like the weirdly robotic hands that grab for iPods:
Isn't that odd? It just doesn't look real. Yet like with the shuffle ad at the top, you feel like if you had one, you'd almost be obliged to clip it to your clothes in a single fluid motion without pausing to get a grip on your zipper. You feel like if you were to pick it up, you'd have to scoop it into the air like a plane doing a Fulton Extraction, snatching it up with no jolts or fumbles.
Suppose maybe part of the reason the iPod remains so successful after all this time is that these ads—in much the same way that the "silhouette" ads give you the feeling that you could be dancing with your iPod just like these guys, but you're probably nowhere near as talented—make you feel like the product is just, you know, a little too good for the average person to aspire to?
It's as though they're creating an atmosphere where the product is presented as if it should cost a lot more than it does; so that when people discover that it's merely somewhat expensive, rather than prohibitively so, they feel like they're getting the bargain of the century.
Does that make any sense?
...And between that Voyager ad, the Sirius ad below, and the "Fulton Extraction" link (the method that was used to pick up Bond and his girl Domino at the end of Thunderball), do we officially have a "domino" theme today or what?
Brian Tiemann
