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Found Footage: Obama reinvents that 1984 iPod commercial

Think you know that famous Ridley Scott 1984 iPod commercial[1]? Think again. Think different. Think politically. A group of anonymous Obama supporters have mashed up footage of Senator (and Prez Candidate) Hillary Rodham Clinton with Apple's iconic iPod ad--even to the point of reshaping the multi-colored Apple logo at the end as an "O". "Why 2008 won't be like '1984'," they pitch. Hillary as Big Brother. Regardless of who you support politically, you've got to admit it's a cleverly done viral ad.

[1] At the 2004 MacWorld Expo, Steve Jobs showed a digitally updated version of the original Mac-only commercial to add the iPod with its signature white earbuds. The Obama commercial uses this updated version. Thanks Jason.



Think you know that famous Ridley Scott 1984 iPod commercial[1]? Think again. Think different. Think politically. A group of anonymous...
 

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timothy broyles

How have you not changed the headline yet TUAW???? This is completely irresponsible reporting. Your headline is innacurate as hell, almost libel actually.

March 20 2007 at 11:37 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
fussball

I'd like this a whole lot better if it was Bush as big brother.... would be much more accurate too.

March 20 2007 at 11:09 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
PK Cville

I think this is the another GOP Swift Boating dirty trick...

You'll know this is true if no one claims ownership of this soon-to-be historic ad. It will go up there in the Hall of Fame next to Willy Horton and Daisy (Johnson's nuke ad against Goldwater).

March 20 2007 at 10:22 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Billy K

Leave it to Ms. Sadun to write a completely false and misleading headline (then contradict it in the first paragraph!).

This ad was not created by Obama's campaign, but an unaffiliated Obama supporter. The headline makes it sound like it's official.

And - as already noted - it's a Macintosh commercial, not iPod.

Seriously - at what point does a writers' comstant errors and misrepresentations become a liability to a publication? I don't know who's in charge of TUAW anymore (it seems to have gone through a silent shakeup in the recent past), but I urge someone in authority to take a look at Ms. Sadun's "contribution."

March 20 2007 at 10:17 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
jphilipson

Where iPods around? But the lady was wearing a shuffle i think. Anyways. I purchase things based on the design on the box. That's just b/c I'm a design freak and well...why not vote like that. Obama got my vote!

March 20 2007 at 2:13 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Isaac Kastama

Politics would be a lot more entertaining if all political commercials were like this. Now the real question is what zune commercial could be used by Hilary camp in a response? Perhaps in it Bill could wirelessly send her votes she would never get if they were not married. The commercial however might end sad, because like most songs swapped over zune wifi, most voters sent wouldn't be able to play with hilary, or their support of her might die out after listening to her for three times.

March 20 2007 at 1:14 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
SixSider

Someone went through a lot of work. It is one thing to change the logo on her shirt. It is a whole other thing to add in an iPod and headphones. How very odd.

March 20 2007 at 12:25 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Bob S.

Simon, that's not my point (and my lack of respect for what your point seems to be isn't the issue here). Erica emailed me with a link to the Huffington Post blog entry that mention this, but Huffington misquotes the blog where she saw it, John Marshall's Talking Points Memo.

I'm a fact-checker at the magazine I work for. I don't expect hip young bloggers to care about accuracy; heck, Huffington isn't even particularly young and she didn't care about accuracy. But it would've taken only one more click to find out that Huffington was inaccurate about what very little of the story exists at all. (And the headline of this TUAW post still credits it personally to Obama.)

March 20 2007 at 12:17 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ilya Smirnov

I agree with both Simon and Derek... This is an interesting attempt, but it has turned out horribly. The original commercial was far better.

March 20 2007 at 12:03 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Albright

I highly doubt this is an official ad by Obama's camp. Besides being vitriolic against a fellow party member, it's also a huge copyright violation. More likely this is just the work of an overenthusiastic Obama fan.

March 19 2007 at 11:59 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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