FBI MEMOS
Memos from the ad agency

Some student in England, Nick Haley, made an ad for iPhone and put it on youtube. The folks at Apple’s ad agency, TBWA/Chiat/Day, saw it and contacted the student about remaking the video in a more professional manner. Now, in a dream-come-true scenario, the young man’s project is going to be seen by millions.

The commercial based on Mr. Haley’s spot will be seen on football games Sunday afternoon and on “Desperate Housewives” and Game 4 of the World Series that night. It is also to be shown in Europe and Japan.

As for how faithful the professional spot is to the amateur version, Mr. Clow (of TBWA/Chiat/Day) said, “we didn’t mess with his content” because “it has a charm to it, a youthful fun.”

The changes include more polished editing and filming the new version in high definition.

“My input was totally respected,” Mr. Haley said, adding that he considered the agency’s commercial “pretty similar” to the original.

What a feel-good story. Congratulations, young man. I’m sure you are quite, as you Brits say, chuffed.

However, my first reaction is ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!? TBWA/Chiat/Day is one of the biggest ad agencies on the planet. Apple is one of the biggest clients on the planet. They have creative directors, art directors, copywriters, associates, interns . . . and they lifted a concept from youtube?! For Apple?!?

The problem I have with it is that it’s just not that special. What’s the big deal about what Mr. Haley did? You folks at TBWA/Chiat/Day have millions of dollars tied up in salaries with creative people. You can’t come up with something better than that?

Hey! Steve Jobs! Looky here! There’s a mid-sized shop in Nashville that would love to have the iPhone account. We’ll come up with some killer creative on our own.

Sheesh.

(This is the blog for Frank/Best International, a creative ad agency with national and international clients located in Nashville, Tennessee. We have creative people and we generate our own creative content.)

This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 10:29 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.