Watch How It Has Evolved
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNpiwOkKIJ8
Goal: talk about how the watch alters your behavior
For centuries, watches have evolved through various functions and styles to accommodate for the time periods. However, for a majority of those years, watches were used as status symbols, from the kings of old to modern businessmen. Although its role as a status symbol has not changed, watches have become the pinnacle of efficiency and practicality. With the development of the smartwatch, people now have the access to thousands of different utilities such as a GPS, a calendar, games, and phone calls literally on their person, which makes communication and daily tasks more doable than ever. With the changing attitude towards watches, smartwatch manufacturers, specifically Apple, must alter their tactics to appeal to the younger generation, which means reminding consumers of the inevitable flow of time and stripping away the haughty commonplaces of old watches to inform them of their civic duty to collaborate with others and to buy their watch, which is shown in the Apple Watch Series 2 Ad, Live Bright.
Both regular watches and smart watches emphasize the flow of time to make the consumer aware of their civic duty to live their life to the fullest. The Apple Watch Ad promotes the same idea with its montage of activities. The watch reminds the lady at the beginning of the ad that it is time to stand up and from there, the audience experience a nonstop flow of different activities. The vibrant colors and intensity of the music create a sense of urgency in the audience, encouraging them to do the same as people in the ad, while simultaneously marketing the watch as an item the consumer needs to feel the same level of enthusiasm and passion in their own lives. Furthermore, by connecting the various scenes within the ad through the changing color, the ad seems more interconnected. The girl on the cliff appears to send a heart emoji to the girl on the slide with the heart glasses, which emphasizes how the Apple Watch allows the consumer to communicate with others, especially when they are in a geographically isolated location. The concept of facilitating interactions between people contributes to the civic duty of collaborating with others, which is what the ad is trying to convey.
While the idea of the constancy of time is consistent between regular watches and the ad, the commonplaces attributed to both contrast one another. The commonplace of having sophistication underlies regular watches due to their long history has status symbols and their presence on the wrists of many powerful people. In the ad, however, the only moments this commonplace is referred to is for a few seconds at the beginning and at the middle. In the beginning of the ad, the Apple watch reminds the woman working at the desk to stand up, which leads to the exercising montage. This undermines the antiquated commonplace of wearing a watch to be sophisticated and introduces a new commonplace: wearing the Apple Watch will contribute to the consumer’s healthiness. Throughout the ad, the audience sees people exercising and the Apple Watch’s heartbeat monitor function, which helps build its credibility as a device that will help the wear stay fit. The new commonplace appeals to a changing demographic where more of the audience is searching to lose weight as well as to a generation that puts experiences before status. By establishing a new commonplace around the Apple Watch, the ad conveys the civic duty of staying healthy by using the watch’s functions, as well as extending duty of spending time to its fullest because of the limitedness of time.
In order to appeal to the changing population, Apple created an ad for its Apple Watch that emphasizes the connections between people through its montage of activities and peels away the old commonplace of the sophisticated wristwatch and replaces it with new commonplaces.
Audience: ?? Maybe millennials who want to buy smart watches/those who think that watches are dying
References:
- https://newrepublic.com/article/121262/how-wearables-will-change-society
- http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/10/opinions/apple-watch-self-obsessed/index.html
- https://medium.com/enrique-dans/what-will-be-the-impact-of-the-smartwatch-on-the-traditional-timepiece-23655eda64
- https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/08/the-swiss-watch-industry-is-doomed/
