For the first time in a long time I remembered a little toy watch I got with a spy kit on my eighth birthday. I would always pretend it was a radio, a stun gun, anything and everything that wasn't actually a watch. It brought back memories of just a few years ago when I bought an arm band to hold my I-Pod while jogging. Yes, that's why I bought it. For jogging, not because it was just plain awesome to have a smart device on my wrist.
Only one thought went through my mind the first time I saw this ad. Its about time.
Now you see there's a really unfortunate part of growing up that most people have to deal with at one point or another. Nearly everything from your childhood was an elaborate ploy for someone to take your parent's money. G.I. Joe was toys, Pokemon was video games and Ronald McDonald was fast food. When I first realized this I felt a little lied to. The world was saying that all these characters, these worlds and these things I possessed were just part of a giant scheme to take my money. Maybe this is the reason people tend to abandon the things they liked as kids in favor of more "adult things"or maybe its just me being way more philosophical then is worth the effort. All I can say is that as I grew older still I realized something bigger, I was strangely okay with all this.
I am nineteen years old and I still buy Pokemon games, I still watch the new G.I. Joe movies and I still eat at McDonald's, even though the food is bad and Ronald McDonald has been all but disowned. How is all this relevant to smart-watches you may be wondering? Its simple really. Nostalgia.
If you ask me nostalgia is the greatest way to get someone to buy your product. This ad takes the pleasant feelings of your past, feelings which you may have a hard time feeling these days, and beats you over the head with them. It shows you those famous and memorable things from your childhood, things you thought were a glimpse of the far future and tells you they aren't so far away anymore. The characters you know and loved growing are perfect to advertise this new and strange product because they are familiar and you can associate certain feelings with them.
Basically what this ad is attempting to do is convince you that this product is over fifty years in the making and if its good enough for the people with cars that talk or fly or transform into giant robots, than you would be an idiot not to try it out yourself. It takes fifty years of TV culture and shows you what you've been missing.
In my opinion, which I respect, this ad has hit it's mark really well, assuming said mark is directly to me. This has got to be one of the better commercials I have seen to date and it has really just stuck with me since I saw it. It has managed to get me genuinely excited something new for the first time in a long time. It manages to be old and new at the same time and I cant say I've seen this method before.
Whether you just want the newest thing or you just really want to pretend you're in Star Trek and talk to your wrist, then this product is for you. It seems like it may be a bit of a niche item at first, but when you can get someone to trade in last year's I-Phone for this years plus a hundred dollars then it likely wont stay that way for long.
This ad's greatest strength is how well it establish the product's credibility. It makes you think back to just how long the concept of a watch that is more than a watch has been around and how its finally happening. But the fact that the ad focuses so much on the old media it is also a bit of a weakness. I realized I got so engrossed in the nostalgia that I was a bit disappointed when they showed the product itself. Besides being on my wrist and being small it doesn't seem all that different then my current smartphone. Maybe if they followed up on why this is actually better than what I already have it would give me a larger incentive. Admittedly if I was in the market for a smart device then I would definitely be all for this, sadly having both an I-Pod and I-Phone my tech fix is quite satisfied for the moment.
I'm not alone in the assumption that this ad plays directly off of nostalgia, both Vlad Savov and Sean Buckley (listed below) agree. Many people on YouTube are appreciative of the ad as well some even saying its one of the few they bothered to actually watch. Many went far enough out of their way to comment on the video with just how much they enjoyed it. From what I can see the ad has definitely accomplished what it was intended.
Based on what I gathered from comments and other blogs about this ad its essentially one of the first shots in the new smart-watch wars. With Apple's announcement of their new smart watch Samsung has responded in full with their own marketing campaign.
After really digging into this ad I realized that a am surprisingly okay with this marketing strategy. I greatly enjoy the feeling of nostalgia, enough to the point that I am perfectly willing to gloss over the fact that people are really just trying to get me to give them my money.
Product website:
www.samsung.com/Galaxy
Sean's Article:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/06/samsungs-galaxy-gear-ads-play-on-your-nostalgia/
Vlad's Article
http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/6/4809222/samsung-galaxy-gear-us-commercial-video
