TomR35
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 9 months, 2010–2022
3:26 · 2.4M views · May 16, 2008
The Kodak Carousel pitch scene from the Mad Men season finale, in which Don Draper sells nostalgia through a slide projector. It runs about three minutes.
HN holds it up as one of the best pitches ever, an example of selling feeling and nostalgia rather than features.
9 comments from Hacker News
Why this product? Nostalgia. Why only Instagram? Because it's good product alignment. Instagram also sells Nostalgia and has a huge user base. If you haven't seen it before, take a moment to watch this clip from an American television show called Mad Men. It's a show about a group of people working at Madison Avenue (in New York City) advertising firms in the 1960's. this video I felt pretty moved the first time I saw that clip. I still feel moved when I watch it. For a moment, I wanted a slide projector. All of the people I know who also watch the show felt it was a master stroke. Nostalgia is a powerful selling force.
Mad Men's Kodak presentation in season one is one of the best pitches I've seen. If you haven't seen it, and even if you haven't watched the show, you should. this video
I want to believe you're on to something here, but how do you "tease" a show like "Mad Men" at low cost? The best tease for that show would be something like the incredible "Carousel" pitch from the end of Season 1[1], and indeed, a link to that from reddit was how I finally decided to check the show out a couple of years in. But that arose organically, after a ton of money had been spent on script, casting, production... [1] this video
>it's a wonderful medium for us to have shared experiences for things that otherwise would be extremely difficult to share. His rant doesn't touch this because that is the perceived value to individuals that facebook provides. Cannot really argue against that and I am glad people are able to use it like this. However, there is something in this "value" that bothers me and why I do not use facebook. From the facebook ad link at the beginning of his post: "We make the tools and services that allow people to feel human, get together, open up. Even if it's a small gesture, or a grand notion -- we wanted to express that huge range of connectivity and how we interact with each other," The ad does not show that. It shows people doing things together. It shows real people interacting in a physical world. It shows physical, tangible, things. Not pictures of things, or short quips and a link to an article or an emoticon. The feeling the ad tries to carry across to the viewer is the exact reason that facebook is a terrible medium to "connect" in the human sense. Lets compare it to Apple's FaceTime ad ( [LINK] ). Not only is the product in almost every scene, but the ad shows exactly how it directly integrates and impacts peoples lives. The last scene with the sign language drives home the technology empowering humans to connect in an almost surreal new way. Another example is the Kodak Carousel scene from Mad Men ( this video ). How facebook goes from their Timeline ad ( [LINK] ) to "Chair
I thought this ad was beautiful. It reminds me of Don's "Carousel" pitch from Mad Men ( this video ) the way it focuses on experiences and feelings. This is it. This is what matters. The experience of a product. How will it make someone feel? Will it make life better? Does it deserve to exist? We spend a lot of time on a few great things. Until every idea we touch enhances each life it touches. You may rarely look at it, but you'll always feel it. This is our signature, and it means everything. Apple is clear about their design philosophy and bold enough to state it directly. I think the author just doesn't like that they are proud of being so good at what they do. (credit to [LINK] for having some of these thoughts first)