#Amiga Commercials again
17 messages in this thread
I just sat down and turned the TV on. I caught the tail end of a
commercial for the Amiga. It was obviously a corporate commercial as it
listed the 800 number to call 'for a dealer nearest you'. It was talking
about the A500 plus a bonus pack (free) that included:
1. Textcraft Plus
2. Where in the World is Carmen SanDiego
3. Tetris
Anyone else seen these commercials? Has Commodore started pushing
the Amiga again? Have commercials appeared for any of the other models?
Don
Adding a bit more to the story…later on, I saw a 2nd Amiga
commercial on the same station. It was the 'Stevie and the Astronauts, et
al' commercial again.
Oh…and the bonus offer also included a video RF adapter so you
can hook the Amiga directly to a TV.
This is getting interesting…even during the big pre-Christmas
push, I never saw 2 commercials in one night on any station(s).
Don
No, No, No! We don't need the pimple-faced teenager hawking Amigas again!
We need commercials aimed at the business community, ads in Byte, Business
Week, PC Week. TV ads featuring stone-faced gray-suited types going "I've
never seen a computer do so much for so little money" type commercial, not
another "Gee whiz, and it plays Tetris too!" commercial.
John
Hmm… ever see the mac commercial where everybody uses the Mac instead of
the PS/2? I was thinking… duplicate that… then have a guy walk by as
the two corporate androids talk… he slows, pauses a sec, listening to
them… squints and looks closer at the two machines… then shakes his
head and walks on…. cut to where he enters a small office (obviously for
a small business) _full_ of Amigas…. "Hey, you guys shoulda seen what I
just saw." As he relates the story, the narrator is heard over it, talking
about the Amiga. Oh, the Amigas in the small office have various stuff on
them that is displayed as the story is related… one is doing a ray-trace,
one is displaying a dtp system, one is displaying a spreadsheet, maybe
another titling some genlocked display…
the guy finishes, and one of the others, laughing, says, "I guess if you
can afford to have computers around with nobody using them, you might as
well make em overpriced and underpowered, too" Everybody laughs… fade to
black, then "For The Creative Mind" (fade out-in) "The Creative Edge" (fade
out-in) "Amiga".
–Eet–
Eet –
Not bad, not bad at all.
Jeff Schweiger
John –
I'd rather have the teenager than the awful marketing video that was
prepared for the A3000 (the one with the head of a corporate 'training
department).
Jeff Schweiger
Seems to me that the commercial described fits your criteria in that
'Stevie' is not doing the selling.
-larry
Agreed mostly, John, but there's also an artsy, video etc. professional
community that needs to know we're not trying to sell them a PC clone or a
Mac. I think the teenage Christmas push should end. It's hard enough to
market to business and art-professionals simultaneously, try to sell the
businessman a machine that little Johnny advertises as a superNintendo.
Kids are a real market and a good place to grow devotees, but they're a
more sophisticated bunch than we give them credit for, and I think a
well-done "look at what this box can do" art/professional type commercial
should haul in the computer-interested teens, and handicap the "Get an
MS-DOS Machine" father-figure demands. Maybe. I'm just the biologist.
Thom
I don't think the artsy type commercial would go good either. What would
be better would be a "head to head" commercial–one that takes direct aim
at the PC/Mac types, particlular the Macintosh, since the Amiga would most
likely be in direct competition with that. One example would be having one
guy sitting behind a Mac and another sitting behind an Amiga. All of a
sudden their boss runs up and says, "I need the data on the Ericson
contract *now* so I can take it with me to Chicago." The two underlings
look at each other(both are bucking for a promotion to the same position)
savagely and begin working. The guy on the Mac starts to format a floppy
and takes his hands off the keyboard, thumbs twiddling. The guy on the
Amiga starts to format a disk, then starts a recalc on the spreadsheet.
While waiting for the spreadsheet to recalc and the disk to format, he
starts up the word processor and writes a report explaining the data. By
this time the Mac has finished formatting the disk. The Macintosh exec,
feeling the heat, starts to fumble with the mouse trying to use the
spreadsheet. By this time the Amigan has imported the data from the
spreadsheet into the Wordprocessing document and saved it to disk. The
Boss, amazed, says "How did you do this so fast?" Underling #1, beaming,
says "Oh, I had a little help from a friend."<fade> "The Businessman's best
friend" <fade> "Amiga"
John
Hey, I like that. Might be tough making it clear what each is doing…
(maybe label the floppy being formatted, "Blank"? 🙂 –Eet–
Those RF adapters might be making a comeback… as the A3000 is sans a mono
composite port, the uses of said port will need to be assumed by the 15KHz
port with RF adapter while the standard monitor runs off the 31KHz port. In
color, though…
THom
Thom,
If you've ever seen an Amiga use a TV for it's display…you'll
understand it then when I say the RF modulator isn't very useful.
Judging from the ad, it would appear that the freebie package is
for the A500 only. That may be wrong…it may be given with any Amiga
sale.
Don
Don,
It was the boy next door… 🙂
-John
Don,
Those commercials are playing here. They start with a portion of the
'Stevie' thing they did last winter, then say "That was the soft sell. Here
is the hard sell." and then they tell about the abilities of the 500 and
offer the software you mentioned. It sounded pretty good to me. We've seen
it several times in the past week or so.
……Betty
Where are you from, Don? (i.e., what city/area are these Amiga commercials
playing in?). Haven't seen any in Seattle, but then I'm not on the TV
much…
Thom
I've seen them on local CT stations. What I think CBM is doing is letting
local dealers use the spots and pay for them out of their own pocket. Then
the dealer inserts a little blurb about prices, location, etc. That way
the Amiga gets coverage at the same time the dealer advertises. The
problem is, it's not the right coverage.
John
Thom,
Denver Colorado. I've only seen the two I saw that night, but then
again…I don't watch much TV myself.
Don