|
Ellen Feiss seems
on her way to being the biggest television commercial star since Clara
Peller, and her spot hasn’t even been broadcast yet.
Clara Peller was
the elderly woman in Joe Sedelmaier’s commercial for the Wendy’s hamburger
chain in 1984 who demanded to know, “Where’s the beef?”
Ellen Feiss is one
of the “switchers” in Apple’s current campaign. The spots — 12 in all — were
shot by documentary filmmaker Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, Mr. Death,
and Fast, Cheap and Out of Control). Each features a real person — not an
actor, Apple says — talking directly to the camera in front of a white
background about switching from a PC to a Macintosh.
They include David
Carey, publisher of The New Yorker, DJ Liza Richardson, and Windows LAN
administrator Aaron Adams.
But nobody seems to
have prompted as much of a reaction as Ms. Feiss, a 15-year-old student who
emailed Apple a 21st-century twist on “the dog ate my homework.”
Her father’s PC
devoured a term paper. That meant a rushed rewrite. “I blame the PC for the
grade I got,” Ms. Feiss wrote.
Her recounting the
mishap in the commercial, however, adds some elements that email can’t
convey.
“It was, like,
beep, beep, beep, beep, bee-bee-bee-beep,” she says, describing the moment
the paper disappeared. “I was, like . . . ‘uhnh?’” She characterizes the
entire experience as, “kind of [pause] . . . a bummer.” (See the commercial
at http://www.apple.com/switch/ads/ellenfeiss.html. You’ll need Apple’s
QuickTime player, which you can download free.)
The ad’s
introduction at the MacWorld New York conference in July started a lot of
buzz in Internet chat rooms, as well as the inevitable debates between PC
partisans and Mac loyalists.
“I’m confused by
Apple’s latest ‘Switch’ campaign,” one poster wrote on the MetaFilter
discussion board. “So far I’ve seen a freelance writer, a DJ, a producer of
‘new media’ and now this stoned chick. It was my impression these were
demographics Apple already dominated.”
Others seem to have
reacted in much the same manner as the people who set up the fan sites. “We
love Ellen” and “You go girlie girl” are among the comments posted at one of
them, along with declarations of eternal devotion.
Several suggested
Ms. Feiss was Mac’s answer to “Steven,” the character whose “Dude, you’re
getting a Dell” mutated from being a commercial tagline to becoming a more
widely applied expression of approval about six months ago.
The question of Ms.
Feiss’s red eyes and meandering speech is also a topic of debate.
Many suggestions
are offered for her appearance and manner. Some — teachers and parents among
them — say that’s the way all teenagers talk. The inflection in Ms. Feiss’s
sign-off at the end of the commercial seems to support that theory: “I’m
Ellen Feiss? And I’m a student?”
Apple won’t say
much more than that about her. Ask about anything regarding the commercial
or the campaign, and you feel like you’re harshing somebody’s mellow.
“It’s our policy
not to comment on any of the commercials, the people in them or how they
were made,” says Apple media relations spokesman Lynn Fox.
The company won’t
comment on the fan sites, the discussion boards, or the proliferation of
merchandise — clocks, T-shirts, mousepads, flying discs and coffee mugs —
that bear Ms. Feiss’s image from the commercial.
And forget about
talking to Ms. Feiss or her family. Apple maintains that the Feiss family is
on vacation all summer and can’t be reached.
Kind of . . . a
bummer? |
