In the early 2000’s, before streaming, social media brand new movies being available on-demand, television was still kind of a thing.
Commercials played a big role in advertising, and if you were alive during that time you no doubt remember the iconic commercials for Apple that featured well known actor Justin Long.
In the very clever campaign, Long was the “I’m a Mac” character pitted against the clunky, dorky “PC guy” played perfectly by John Hodgman.
Well, Long is back in a new series of computer ads, only this time he’s pitching products that don’t have a piece of red fruit with a bite taken out of it.
“Hello, I’m a — Justin. Just a real person, doing a real comparison between Mac and PC,” Long says in the new commercial for Intel. Get it? A strong play on the old way he used to intro the spots, saying “Hello, I’m a Mac”
It’s important to know the backstory with Apple and Intel. Apple had long been an Intel customer, but last fall Apple dumped Intel’s semiconductor chips for their own M1 chips in the latest lineup of Mac computers.
Apple made a big deal out of pointing out that their new chips made the Mac computer much faster, and provided a much longer battery life compared to the old Mac’s, which of course had Intel chips.
Intel had to do something to fight back because a significant portion of their business disappeared with Mac. So they are coming out firing in the commercials, and it’s a brilliant way to get attention and try to prove a point.
In the new spots, Long takes a long look at a collection of PC’s with Intel chips in them.
“These are all PCs. Oh yeah, Intel! Nice. My face just unlocked that, that’s so cool. And I’ve never seen a screen like that on a laptop.”
Then he moves on to look at Apple’s lineup of Mac’s. “So these are the newer Macs? Okay. So, gray and gray-er.”
Well done.
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