This past weekend was called Sportacular Saturday. Between the madness in Las Vegas for one of the biggest boxing matches in quite some time and the Kentucky Derby, there was a lot to see if you are the kind of guy or gal that watches ESPN's SportsCenter every night.
Fiat Crysler Automobiles (FCA) wasn't going to let the Derby go to waste. That's why the company worked with an agency in creation of not one, but two, advertisements.
While one spot focused on strong women, the other seemed a bit more tongue in cheek. That's because while the company seems to point to one message, it seems that it's subtly hinting at another. Called "The Pack," it features a flock of sheep being herded by a dog and its respective RAM owner. One of the sheep diverges from the pack and stands a league of its own.
Considering the animal used is a sheep, is FCA saying that the rest of the flock of sheep are GM and Ford truck owners?
While we're fans of the improvements RAM has been making over the years, and we'd have one any day of the week over a GM product, there's no question it is still FAR behind the innovation of the 2015 Ford F-150. It's apples and oranges, really.
To us, being tech guys, this seems to reek of the same mistake Apple made during the 1985 Super Bowl. After a staggering response to its iconic 1984 spot, in 1985 Apple ran a largely forgotten ad called "Lemmings." Similar to FCA's "The Pack," "Lemmings" sends a strong message that doing business as usual is not the way to go. To keep this brief, the Apple ad was a huge turn off for potential buyers and backfired in such a way that it's now a case study in how NOT to market.
Check out ALL the commercials we're talking about, below!
The ones with the guts to stand apart join a league all of their own. Guts. Glory. Ram.
Lemmings was a television commercial that launched the "Macintosh Office" by Apple Computer in the United States, in January 1985, a year after the introduction of the Apple Macintosh in 1984. It was aired during the 1985 Super Bowl. Apple didn't air another commercial during the Super Bowl until the Hal commercial in 1999 and later, the Pepsi/iTunes "I fought the law" commercial in 2004. The Lemmings commercial was a large failure, and was widely seen as insulting to potential customers.
To the soundtrack of a whistled, discordant and down-tempo version of "Heigh-Ho", a long line of blindfolded businesspersons slowly makes its way through a dusty, windswept landscape to a cliff, where one by one they fall to their doom. A voiceover notes that the 'Macintosh Office' will soon be announced. The last businessperson in the line stops just at the brink, uncovers his eyes and takes in the situation, as the announcer states "you can look into it". A second line of people is then shown, as the announcer continues, "or you can go on with business as usual".
"Have you ever thought you just didn't have anything left in the tank? Well — you do. Guts. Glory. Ram.
Read Article