This year’s Super Bowl included both a Samsung Galaxy Note ad that I didn’t like and a pretty decent Best Buy commercial. While the Galaxy Note clip was too flower power and only showed the stylus as selling point, the Best Buy ad showed us some innovators in the mobile field, including people who invented the camera sensor, Instagram, text messaging and… Best Buy.
Steve Jobs would have fit this ad perfectly, but I’m guessing he wouldn’t have liked to have his image used for a retail chain. Last year Best Buy had an ad that involved Ozzy Osbourne and Justin Bieber and thank God we got rid of that commercial. Originally, this year was also supposed to involve a celebrity in the Super Bowl campaign, but Drew Panayiotou, Best Buy US marketing chief was influenced by Steve Jobs’ passing and decided to go with innovators, considering the Silicon Valley inventors are modern stars.
The ad below opens with Philippe Kahn, the CEO of Fullpower Technologies and the guy we give credit for inventing the cameraphone. Next, there’s Ray Kurzweil, the father of text to speech tech and we also see guys from Square, Shazam and Words With Friends. In spite of this original ad, Best Buy has had a rough year, being seen as a sinking ship by many, as it competes with Walmart and other strong rivals.
