Filed under: Cult of Mac, Odds and ends, Found Footage
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.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Jason said 9:28PM on 3-19-2007
1984 iPod commercial...um, I think you mean 1984 Mac commercial.
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Ruben said 9:38PM on 3-19-2007
#1 beat me to it.
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Wıπ37øµ said 9:55PM on 3-19-2007
rotfl
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Wıπ37øµ said 10:00PM on 3-19-2007
No i really do not know that 1984 iPod commercial. rotfl
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derek said 10:08PM on 3-19-2007
well that was freakin retarded
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Mike Solis said 10:59PM on 3-19-2007
I thought the same thing as you guys, but if you notice, when the orange-shorts wearing lady is seen she has an iPod at her hip. How this means that the 1984 Mac commercial becomes a 1984 iPod commercial beats me.
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Grant Robertson said 11:04PM on 3-19-2007
Priceless.
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Bob S. said 11:15PM on 3-19-2007
I don't expect the hip young editors of TUAW to be politically savvy, but are you sure it's from "anonymous Obama supporters"? There have already been a few attempts from the Right to discredit both of them by creating this kind of smear and making it look like it came from the campaign of one or the other.
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andres said 11:36PM on 3-19-2007
Tuaw forgot that blaming Obama for something without evidence was already tried and failed. If you want to follow the same fat as Insightmag, which lost the little bit of credibility it had left before the attempted Obama smear, then keep on baselessly attributing attack ads to Obama.
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Simon Arch said 11:51PM on 3-19-2007
@Bob S.: Right, left, they're all foul and corrupt. I'd sooner vote for Satan than for any of the bastards running in 2008.
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Albright said 11:59PM on 3-19-2007
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.
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Albright said 12:00AM on 3-20-2007
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.
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Ilya Smirnov said 12:04AM on 3-20-2007
I agree with both Simon and Derek... This is an interesting attempt, but it has turned out horribly. The original commercial was far better.
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Bob S. said 12:17AM on 3-20-2007
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.)
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SixSider said 12:25AM on 3-20-2007
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.
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Isaaac Kastama said 1:15AM on 3-20-2007
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.
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jphilipson said 2:15AM on 3-20-2007
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!
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Billy K said 10:49AM on 3-20-2007
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."
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fussball said 11:09AM on 3-20-2007
I'd like this a whole lot better if it was Bush as big brother.... would be much more accurate too.
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timothy Broyles said 1:21PM on 3-20-2007
How have you not changed the headline yet TUAW???? This is completely irresponsible reporting. Your headline is innacurate as hell, almost libel actually.
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