Mario Sundar's Speakeasy

The Superbowl for women (well that’s how some advertisers view the Oscars) had 5 technology references in its primetime telecast that just ended a few minutes ago on the West Coast. I thought it’d be interesting to take a quick birds-eye view of the technology that received sponsored and unsponsored recognition at the Oscars 2007:

1. The Apple “Hello” iPhone ad vs. the Microsoft “Wow” Vista ad

As Macworld had speculated, Apple came out with it’s simple yet effective “Hello” ad campaign at this year’s Academy Awards 2007, built around snippets of film sequences which featured memorable movie characters saying “Hello” and ending with the simple, terse, and curiosity enabling picture of the iPhone — Copy reads: “Hello”, coming in June.

Microsoft, on the other hand, blundered through various different “Wow” inducing scenarios which did nothing but confuse the viewer as to what they were talking about. The ads ended with — Wow. Microsoft Vista 2007. What am I supposed to make of it?

The 3 major reasons why the Apple ad scored a brilliant victory over the Microsoft ad

* Consistency – all ads featured the same scenes with the same ending, reiterating the message, while the Vista ads, bun(d)gled different Wow scenes that only made you wonder what this ad was all about and didn’t provide a clear answer?

* Simplicity – Apple ads are known for their simple, clear messaging and the Hello ad was no different

* Relevance – the Apple ads were relevant to the occasion (The Oscars) with sequences from films thrown into the ad, while Microsoft’s was all over the place.

All I can say is, Apple, “you had me at Hello”, while Microsoft, I’m still not Wow’ed.

Here are reviews from Scott Goldberg (Digital Media Wire) and Philip Michaels (MacWorld)

Check out the iPhone Oscars ad here.

2. The Designers behind “An Inconvenient Truth” – Duarte Design

Al Gore’s, “An Inconvenient Truth” took home 2 awards, but what is not known, is there is a Bay Area, Silicon Valley based design agency behind the stellar Keynote presentation that is at the heart of this Al Gore documentary – Duarte Design (via Presentation Zen).

Here’s some background into the technology used for the presentation:

Al Gore’s presentation was in fact using Apple’s Keynote presentation software (the same software Steve Jobs presents from) and did so for numerous reasons. Some of the videos dropped were HD, they played and scaled extremely well and was something our team couldn’t even begin to think about doing in PowerPoint! (via Presentation Zen)

Now, all I’ve to do, is add “An Inconvenient Truth” to my Netflix queue 🙂

3. YouTube reference:

YouTube was referenced by Gwyneth Paltrow before giving away the award for “Best Cinematography”, yet another sign of the company’s phenomenal growth in the past year, becoming a pop cultural milestone in the life’s of thousands of wannabe film-makers.

4. MySpace Reference:

Another mini-reference to MySpace, by host Ellen Degeneres in the middle of some light banter with Hollywood heavyweights Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg. Yet another social networking company that has carved out its image in the minds of millions in the past couple of years.

Did you notice any other references to technology at tonight’s Oscars 2007?

Feel free to share.

Filed under: Uncategorized