adbreak-a-roo (part 1)

09 Oct, 2024

adbreak-a-roo is a continuation of chatterbarks, my old substack, because a blog is a more reasonable format for it than a newsletter.

we’re gonna begin this series with a commercial compilation from 2000, courtesy of arwuns:

dell dude

2000 was the year the dell dude’s campaign started. then 20-year old ben curtis became the face of dell computers, playing a young definitely not a stoner character who sold computers with the catchphrase “dude, you're getting a dell!”.

here it seems like the earlier ads were focused more on dell dude (actually named steve) filming messages to his parents about how they should give him a dell computer, free upgrades and all. the “dude, you're getting a dell!” catchphrase was nowhere to be seen. this is also proven with another dell ad of the same year:

by 2001, his catchphrase seems to have been coined:

steve the dell dude continued making ads for dell until 2003, when he was arrested for marijuana possession. dell was surprised that the stoner-like character was actually a stoner, and ended the ads, with curtis getting sparse roles afterwards. by 2021, nostalgia and shifting attitudes towards weed prevailed, and the dell dude was brought back to promote recycling efforts, in a “heyyyy remember this guy haha nostalgiaaa!!! buy our products” kinda way.

on a final note: going back to the first ad, it seems like steve is recording this message on a camcorder, or is it a webcam? some ads around this era did use people talking to the webcam as a novelty thing, but the “play” button is more of a videocassette thing.

sonystyle

… ooohh nooooo…….

it’s a christmas themed rap. they’re buying mp3 players….

santa shops at sonystyle, and also breakdances, according to the ad. sonystyle is gone now, replaced by just electronics.sony.com. i presume there was a fateful day when companies realized they could sell their products on [brand x].com instead of making a separate site like shop[brand x].com.

vw beetle vapor

that rather embarrassing sony ad is followed by one of the best and most beautiful ads in this list. the reflections of nature on the roof of the blueish vapor color, set to tune of hooverphonic’s renaissance affair. the y2k nostalgic types will go insane when they find this one. it’s y2k! it’s frutiger aero! it’s gen x soft club! it’s everything listed under “popular tiktok aesthetics originating from the 2000s”!

it’s originally from the 90s, according to this upload. the difference between the 98 and the 00 ads are the narrator, of course, but also they mention different numbers. the 98 upload says it 200 available for a limited time, the 00 says 2000 available, only online. but is it really from 1998? pretty much all vapor beetles sold online are from 00, but there’s obviously a different narration and number, as well as the online aspect, which was supposedly an experiment the vw did with different limited release colors. it could also be different markets, maybe vw upped the production run and ran a new version of the ad. i’m just throwing out guesses here, but unless you have some knowledge on vw beetle models, your guess is as good as mine.

(the tragedy of) onepricecds

it’s october of 2000. bmg music has just announced onepricecds, a website where you can buy cds from bmg artists, all at the price of $9.99:

the ad is fast paced, but serves both humor and information on this new services, with the most popular artists of the time highlighted to incentivise the audience:

with a slogan of “play us first!” and a quick shot of a whining dog, the ad ends. the site might as well have ended with the ad.

by the time the internet archive’s wayback machine had finally gotten around to capturing the site, it had celebrated it’s one month anniversary like this:

…oh.

it’s unknown what “we’ve heard from our members and friends” meant, but whatever it was, it was serious enough to take down the site, while their “gremlins” worked hard to get it running again, with expectations that the site would be running again soon.

by february of 2001, the site told people that the site would not be up for christmas. christmas 2000, that is. they hadn’t bothered to update the site afterwards. fortune magazine didn’t wait, and onepricecds was buried in a mass grave of 135 failed dot-com ventures in their valley of the damned.com piece, alongside other, forgotten dot-com sites.¹

by july, the tiny handful of people who still had hope (and the people who might’ve heard about it from their months old tape recording or from any mentions of it in the magazines, if they existed) were greeting with bmg’s white flag of defeat:

mayhaps we will never know what bmg’s members and friends found in onepricecds that ultimately resulted in its untimely demise, but whatever it was, it killed off the site in not even a month. remember, we just saw an ad for the site. marketing money was poured into this, god knows how much money. it was all for nothing, but a blip on the radar.

microsoft

steve ballmer was probably pissing his pants while filming this ad. microsoft was being accused of running a monopoly, and in united states v. microsoft corp, on april of 2000, the courts found the claims to be true. with the breakup of microsoft edging very close to happening, microsoft went full pr mode.

while not mentioning what was going on behind the scenes, it seems to me pretty obvious this ad, which doesn’t try to advertise any actual products, is a pr ad trying to get the public’s approval, with all the talk of jobs and the economy and what not. we’ll let you decide if ballmer’s voice and future role in microsoft persuades

also note the mention of “our next generation of software”. while pretty basic speaking, ms was dropping windows 2000 and windows me at the time, and getting ready for xp. the best is yet to come, indeed.

thanks for making it this far, i appreciate it. if you didnt, then boo. but also, ill try to have some variety in this blog, so maybe a future post could be more of your taste! until next time!

#ads #commercials