Make It Like It Was

[via Digital Trends]

Emotion. That’s what the marketer and the advertiser are hoping that their commercial gets out of us. That their ad triggers a feeling—an emotional connection—with us, that we respond in some way. Desire. Wonder. Happiness. Lust. Sometimes, fear. But never apathy, never take-it-or-leave-it. That’s a commercial failure (in more ways than one).

Some of our strongest emotional responses are connected to our childhood and youth. That’s usually the time in our lives when we were most carefree, happiest, felt most loved, most desirable, in wonder of the world and everything in it (and most debt-free). And why advertisers often use nostalgic themes, and images of children and young people, in their work: to elicit those strong emotions within us and connect them with the product that they’re promoting.

Here is a brilliant new mashup video in which Don Draper of the TV show Mad Men pitches a novel technology product to clients: the new Timeline profile feature on Facebook. 

No, quantum physicists haven’t achieved time travel (and least, not yet). The video's creator has simply edited a scene from an episode of the show and replaced images of the original product with Facebook’s Timeline. It's completely fictitious, of course (doubly so). It’s also amazing how it works seamlessly—and does a really good job of showing how Timeline will actually work.

And Don Draper demonstrates the power of nostalgia to communicate with an audience.

Click through to watch the video.* This post thanks to Digital Trends.

*PS: the original video link above no longer works; the clip may have been taken down as a result of a rights infringement claim by one of the companies involved (which would be a pity). Here's another copy of the video that is still viewable at time of writing. The video was originally created by Eric Leist.