A Sane Mad Man

I've seen this treacly Apple ad of smiling folks with various iStuff, which ends with a proclamation that the widgets are designed in California. I suspected that most folks were too dumb to see through the propaganda, what with the widgets made by wage slaves in China, and a few rich folks in CA. Turns out I'm not really alone. There may be intelligent life in the universe. I mean, claiming California as home is so transparently false, yet sure to piss off the rednecks who've spent their last dollar on an iStuff. What were they thinking?

Apple's new ad, dubbed "Designed by Apple in California," scored a 528 on "Information," versus an hardware-industry average of 603. A recent ad for Samsung's new Galaxy S4 phone that showed features such as the ability to answer a call without touching the screen scored a 757 by that same measure.

Years ago I read David Ogilvy's book on advertising. From memory, the crux of much of the book was exploring his main thesis: the object of the adverts was your (the Mad Man's) wife, and you wouldn't think her stupid. Give her as much information as possible. I recall a advert reproduced on a full page of the book, almost all text; an essay in persuasion. Of course, this was long before the Google ad. But that quote belies Ogilvy's assertion from that long past.