In An Age of Optimism

I'm going to digress a little from yesterday's track.

But going along with all the Obama hype, how everyone in America is and has been so excited for his promised "change" that countries around the world are seeing it as a possible fad or fashion, companies too are taking this hope and turning it into a form of optimism to try to get consumers to buy more, and "hope"fully (haha, get it?) try to restimulate our lagging economy. In this effort, TBWA/Chiat/Day has created a new campaign for Visa which I am a pretty big fan of: it's called Go, and it attempts to push people out of their boxes and inspire them to have hope that there are still possibilities out there, that they can get out and really do something if the mood strikes.

Their primary commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr42rfptEdg

Using the voice of Morgan Freeman, the commercial incorporates the word "Go" into inspiring, beautiful images of people doing things they maybe wouldn't normally do, coupled with upbeat music that uplifts the viewer. All in all, it is a commercial that expresses the fundamental feeling of today: though we are in a terrible economic recession that is having dire consequences not only domestically, but around the world as well, we have nevertheless entered a new era in which the times will change, and things will get better. It's not just the election of Obama; instead it is the core optimism rooted in each of us that brings hope to this struggling time. Things will get better, but we have to be willing to break ourselves out of our daily routines and try to make them that way.

On another note, for my advertising class yesterday we had to create a radio spot for our products. As mine is Six Flags, and there is a Batman roller coaster and a Superman roller coaster, I played off of the often heated debates that are incited when people get into arguments about which superhero is better- Superman, or Batman. In my spot (and subsequent ones if this became an actual campaign), they argue about the villains the other fights (making fun of them), the lines at their respective coasters, and the twists and turns that their coasters have. Since Batman won this first round of battle in my spot, I made Superman seem like, well, kind of an idiot, talkative and more sociable than Batman, who is sarcastic, pretty anti-social, and doesn't speak too many words; however, the ones he does say do have impact. It needs some tweaking so I won't put it up here yet, but the general idea is that even superheroes can be petty when it comes to rides as cool as the ones at Six Flags.

Carpe Diem!