Monday, August 28, 2006

Commercial Idea

Advertisers! Feel free to use this idea for your 30-second commercial spot.

We’re at a rock concert, and the guitar is reaching the meeley meeley meeley meeeeee point. You know, this is the part in the set where the guitarist starts picking the strings way up on the guitar neck.

The camera focuses on an old, hippie-type guy, a little scraggly and a little unwashed. He holds up a lighter to the music. His body language is a little “been there, done that.” He is tired and going through the motions. He is old and tired and wondering a little, “Why do I still come to these things?”

He turns his head, sees something, and his mouth drops open with astonishment and wonder. He looks up. The person next to him, who is younger, cleaner, cooler, and into the music, raises his hand, but instead of a lighter, this person has a cellphone. A glowing, shiny cellphone.

The camera tracks away from the old guy and moves down the row of concert goers. All of the audience members are holding up cellphones instead of lighters. The camera swings around and now shows what the audience looks like from the band’s perspective – a sea of shining cellphone lights.

As the music reaches a groovy crescendo, this image fades out, and up fades the corporate logo and the current corporate catchphrase. (Examples: “Express yourself.” Or “The future is hear.” Or “Now you know what happened to Glass Tiger – they’re so hard up for money, they’ll do this commercial.”

***

I have thought about getting into advertising, but the fact is that even though I could do great work from a creativity perspective, I do not have the personality that thrives in an ad agency environment. This is a fancy way of saying I have a sense of right and wrong, the kiss of death to any good advertising career.

The idea for this commercial came during a recent concert when everyone raised their cellphones to the band. At first I thought, “cellphones are the new lighters?” but then I realized that the audience was just trying to snap a good picture of the band.

It was a striking image, and I thought any technology/telecommunications conglomerate would love to use this in their ads. I don’t really want there to be a cellphone conglomerate, but I know they’ll come up with some sort of cool name and I’ll overlook all their misdeeds. Here’s one Verizon + Nokia + Cingular = Ver-ki-gular. It sounds like something Winnie the Pooh would say - Beware the Verkigular!

Anyway, part of me wanted to see this idea made real. So rather than updating a resume, getting a job at an ad agency, hiring a film crew, and getting this image into a commercial of some sort, I would rather just make a blog entry and move on to the next idea.

2 comments:

wubbahed said...

Pick a phone company and make the commercial yourself and put it on YouTube. Then you can make millions as a viral advertiser. You'd be surprised at the number of corporations doing this stuff already...

Recovering Sociopath said...

This is great! You, sire, are brilliant.

By the way, BOO, to both you and the Missus.