Seeing the Beatles movie A
Hard Day’s Night reminded me of how adults at the time reportedly thought
their early inoffensive pop songs were the worst noise imaginable. And when I
was a kid, I remember people’s parents yelling at them to: “Turn off that
racket!” and such. (Luckily for me, our house had a wing on it so our parents
couldn’t hear our infernal racket growing up. Mostly.) But can you imagine
those same parents from the 1960s being exposed to death metal, black metal,
trance, techno, gangsta rap, etc.? They’d go crazy!
So while we saw ad after ad for people enjoying themselves
dancing around to the music on their iPod (with earbuds in), we never got to
see all the other people who enjoyed their use of the iPod: their parents! So
using this idea for an ad for the iPod (or another mp3 player), we’d see some
parents reading the newspaper in their living room, when just then black metal
starts blaring (let’s say Darkthrone; or maybe death metal and Deicide). So
they shout: “Turn down that racket!” And then we cut to their (teen) kid turning off the stereo and putting on the iPod and listening to the same music,
but without bothering their parents.
My guess is that many parents recognized this aspect of the
iPod and bought it for their kids, but I never saw any advertising based upon
this concept. (Maybe there was some, but if so, I missed it.) But now that everyone’s already got an iPod or a smartphone with
music on it, maybe this idea would work best as an ad for some replacement
earbuds that really crush it sound-wise. And so the kid in this ad could still
blast the same music and have it sound just as good, but without anyone else
having to hear it. (Stock earbuds sound lame.)
