It's such a memorable ad. It's like the dream of a child actually brought to life.
I've seen this story discussed around the internet over the last few days and found it interesting how younger generations seemed to only view it negatively (pollution, excess, etc). It's quite sad that something that seems like it could be universally enjoyed at the isn't now.
There no way to find out about anything if people don't advertise. Make a website? Advertising. Wear a band T-Shirt? Advertising. Make a website called Hacker News as VC firm? Advertising.
>When Conner was checking in to his hotel later that night, a ball bounced by on the sidewalk. He was 4 or 5 miles away.
I have to assume there was so many they never found just left to the ecosystem.
As much as I loved bouncy balls as an 80s kid, anytime I see them now it just reminds me of the sheer amount of useless plastic/rubber waste we produce. Even if bouncy balls in and of themselves are a tiny portion of that overall waste.
For example I live in the South, Mardi Gras is huge here and after every parade it looks like a god damn war zone of trash and waste left behind for prison labor to clean up as best they can. If it was me I would do a ban on plastic beads entirely as throwable parade objects.
> It's quite sad that something that seems like it could be universally enjoyed at the isn't now.
IMO at some point we all have to look back at the reality of past actions and be cognizant of our waste and abuse of the planet even if it was a fun time.
> As much as I loved bouncy balls as an 80s kid, anytime I see them now it just reminds me of the sheer amount of useless plastic/rubber waste we produce.
They're not useless. As you've just pointed out you enjoyed them as a kid. For a few cents in plastic how many hours of enjoyment did you get? What was wasted here?
> after every parade it looks like a god damn war zone
Yea but when you stack up the tax receipts it suddenly looks very worthwhile.
> reality of past actions and be cognizant of our waste and abuse of the planet even if it was a fun time.
Humans are always going to want to have fun. From my point of view have all the plastic beads you want. It's the nuclear weapons and daily war that gives me pause.
“I think our bill was $74,000 on broken windows,” said Ranahan. “And the crazy thing is, everyone loved it. The people, the neighborhood, they still come out to me and talk to me about it.”
"We want to set City Hall on fire, we want to bump a blimp into the Golden Gate Bridge and we want to jump a hook-and-ladder truck over Lefty O’Doul Bridge with Roger Moore on it’ … and they were seriously like, ‘OK.’”
My main question is, where did this San Francisco go? I'd love for the city to create more memorable moments because the city is special. But today, this ad would've been buried in CEQA lawsuits. Hell, parking in the wrong public spot could get your car keyed by some irate millionaire[1].
First the dotcom boom pushed the artists out to Oakland by 2000, but there were still burners and hipsters in 2005. Then the subprime boom/bust took a lot of the hipsters and older businesses out, but the tech busses brought the Silicon Valley nerds in 2010. Then the rise of Uber startups through 2016 pushed the artists into warehouses until the Ghostship fire, but there were still techbros and crypto in the Mission. When the pandemic finally came for the rest of Frisco there was hardly anyone left who cared or they were so old they wanted everyone else to just leave. If you remember Market street and the Tenderloin from the old days, the tents today are kinda quaint.
Wow, as someone with vivid and fond memories of watching this in college, I'm seeing this in this very thread. Kinda wild, and really makes me feel old and out of touch. And that heartbeats song is a banger and will forever take me back.
Yeah, it’s interesting that they have no motivation to separate the art from the commission nor any attempt to understand that it was a very different time. Broadcast television and low bandwidths.
The idea that advertising is a “cancer upon society” fundamentally misunderstands how mass media, telecommunications, and modern society works. It’s about passing and sharing information.
I hate most ads and almost all modern advertising sucks. But this ad ain’t it. It relies on nostalgia, a dream like element. The amount of pollution is, globally, negligible, and they largely cleaned them up. We hear stories of people keeping balls as mementi [1].
Call me cynical but if we are not meant to enjoy even the aesthetically pleasing stuff the neoliberal environmental disaster of the last 40 years creates we are in for a bad time. May as well go back to hunter gathering of subsistence farming.
[1] I know it’s non standard but if “octopi” is cromulent then so is “mementi”
> younger generations seemed to only view it negatively
I’m too young to remember this ad but I’m disgusted by it now. I hate advertising to begin with but this one floods the street with plastic which destroys private property and will never get cleaned up. What is there to like about it? How was this ever allowed? Imagine today I make an ad about dumping red 40 into the Mississippi River for a Netflix show. It’s evil and everyone knows it.
Don't get me wrong: as a piece of advertising, this is one of the few I would be willing to watch again. On the other hand, I am left asking: what is the point? It is not as though there were many venues where you could enjoy the vibrance of it. It certainly looks better on my modern monitors than on my Bravia TV of that era.
As for children, I would be strongly opposed to showing a child that commercial. It isn't hard to imagine them trying to haul buckets of bouncy balls to the roof after being ... inspired.
I was in San Francisco that week. Ecological issues aside, it was the last time San Francisco felt different in a good way rather than a bad one. The “negative energy” is now too much for me and, when I travel to the Bay Area, I pretty much just stay on-track. I wonder if people who lived in San Francisco from 1965-2005 expected it to last forever.
I think this is bigger than just SF. After the great recession the generally positive atmosphere in the western world never really recovered. Any time it even got close to recovering some new horrible event happened.
Positivity has become politically suspect. It's doubly sad to be unhappy about how things are going in the world generally and also to be nervous about enjoying when something goes right. It's sad that making a positive comment about the weather is something I only do with close friends now, and not even all of them. There are people I've known for years, who know what my politics are, who know who I give money to, yet still, if I say something nice about the weather, they have to say "too bad climate isn't weather" or "yeah, but you know in a few months it's going to be terrible, because global warming is real." And none of this drives political engagement or moves anybody's mind in the slightest; it's just a social fashion that arose spontaneously, for no purpose, and which we will enforce zealously until one day it doesn't seem important anymore.
As the world grows more interconnected, the proliferation of news about horrible events happening spreads faster, and even if you personally ignore the news, other people don’t, and this colors the overall mood of society.
There is horror everywhere, and always will be until the end of our days.
I mean, you mean after the 2003-2004 Iraq war, 9/11 in 2001, the stolen election of 2000 & the crash of 2000, the Kosovo war in 1999? There’s always a lot of reasons why the atmosphere can be negative every year.
The San Francisco I experience is full of positive energy. Sure, maybe if you're visiting and stay in Union Square, that's not what you see. But if you live in the residential neighborhoods and work somewhere nice (such as in the Presidio), there isn't another city in the world I would rather be.
It seems to me like working from home has transformed the residential neighborhoods. I recently visited Inner Sunset as was astonished at how many people were out and about.
When I visited in the 90's I remember conversations mentioning seeing the signs and trying to delay the inevitable end. Whether someone sees that as dooming or prescient is probably a matter of if they moved in before or after 2005.
What city regions have better energy, are good economically, and have natural beauty (ocean, mountain, plants)?
It is easy to find faults with the SF bay area (politics, costs, and derivative issues), but is somewhere actually better?
EDIT: Thanks for the downvotes. It was an honest question, and I badly wanted to be informed, having given the issue in-depth consideration over the years. I wasn't being snarky.
I'd say Lisbon, Portugal is probably the closest (including Weather, which places like Seattle are lacking), especially because you didn't mention pre-existing tech industry which is probably SF's main differential versus everywhere else. It even has a big red bridge?
P.S: I'm sorry Lisboetas..you are already getting swamped by Digi Nomads, but it's true.
Really depends on what you mean by all those. Some would say Sandy Eggo has the beauty, others would contest that Seattle has the economy and mountains.
The people left there are those who like what it has become or are trapped in someway; others have moved.
It really is surrounded by amazing natural beauty. However, everything to do with humans has slowly morphed into an unfixable nightmare and it's heartbreaking. I think it's time to throw in the towel, evacuate everyone from the city and let it return to nature as a wildlife preserve.
I lived in SF then and picked up a 5 gallon bucket of bouncy balls at a garage sale. I didn't realize until now that this is where they almost certainly came from.
This was a commercial produced for European television in 2005. Barely anyone even had an HDTV back then. I certainly saw it in standard definition when it aired.
While I also detest commercials as a whole, I think it is worth stepping back and viewing this as art. The concept, the visuals, the original song (not the one you find on most videos due to licensing)... it is beautiful and should evoke childhood joy and wonder. Yes it was wasteful, but if we only do things because they are efficient, I think our humanity suffers.
They made at least one more commercial [1] during the same time period and it was also inspired by awe and wonder. While it did waste paint and likely pollute the local groundwater temporarily, it was conducted in a building that was scheduled for demolition.
Readit News
I've seen this story discussed around the internet over the last few days and found it interesting how younger generations seemed to only view it negatively (pollution, excess, etc). It's quite sad that something that seems like it could be universally enjoyed at the isn't now.
Advertising is part of that trade.
I’m happy it exists.
>When Conner was checking in to his hotel later that night, a ball bounced by on the sidewalk. He was 4 or 5 miles away.
I have to assume there was so many they never found just left to the ecosystem.
As much as I loved bouncy balls as an 80s kid, anytime I see them now it just reminds me of the sheer amount of useless plastic/rubber waste we produce. Even if bouncy balls in and of themselves are a tiny portion of that overall waste.
For example I live in the South, Mardi Gras is huge here and after every parade it looks like a god damn war zone of trash and waste left behind for prison labor to clean up as best they can. If it was me I would do a ban on plastic beads entirely as throwable parade objects.
> It's quite sad that something that seems like it could be universally enjoyed at the isn't now.
IMO at some point we all have to look back at the reality of past actions and be cognizant of our waste and abuse of the planet even if it was a fun time.
They're not useless. As you've just pointed out you enjoyed them as a kid. For a few cents in plastic how many hours of enjoyment did you get? What was wasted here?
> after every parade it looks like a god damn war zone
Yea but when you stack up the tax receipts it suddenly looks very worthwhile.
> reality of past actions and be cognizant of our waste and abuse of the planet even if it was a fun time.
Humans are always going to want to have fun. From my point of view have all the plastic beads you want. It's the nuclear weapons and daily war that gives me pause.
It is visually stunning for sure, but I have to not think too hard about the implications of it.
I love the ad and the stunt. I would have been as giddy as a child if I'd seen it in person.
It's also rings true to me that it's rather wasteful and destructive in service of selling TVs.
Shrug, what's done is done so I'm free to enjoy it guilt-free while also thinking we probably shouldn't do stunts like this anymore.
This happens frequently for a good many things. Collective ignorance gets replaced with the lens of hindsight.
… and there it is. People knew but saw through it all to just maybe enjoy the wonder of the event.
"We want to set City Hall on fire, we want to bump a blimp into the Golden Gate Bridge and we want to jump a hook-and-ladder truck over Lefty O’Doul Bridge with Roger Moore on it’ … and they were seriously like, ‘OK.’”
My main question is, where did this San Francisco go? I'd love for the city to create more memorable moments because the city is special. But today, this ad would've been buried in CEQA lawsuits. Hell, parking in the wrong public spot could get your car keyed by some irate millionaire[1].
[1]: https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/parking-wars-sf-billion...
I'm sure somebody has a similar timeline for NYC.
That is until he, inevitably, would shoot me with impunity.
The idea that advertising is a “cancer upon society” fundamentally misunderstands how mass media, telecommunications, and modern society works. It’s about passing and sharing information.
I hate most ads and almost all modern advertising sucks. But this ad ain’t it. It relies on nostalgia, a dream like element. The amount of pollution is, globally, negligible, and they largely cleaned them up. We hear stories of people keeping balls as mementi [1].
Call me cynical but if we are not meant to enjoy even the aesthetically pleasing stuff the neoliberal environmental disaster of the last 40 years creates we are in for a bad time. May as well go back to hunter gathering of subsistence farming.
[1] I know it’s non standard but if “octopi” is cromulent then so is “mementi”
I’m too young to remember this ad but I’m disgusted by it now. I hate advertising to begin with but this one floods the street with plastic which destroys private property and will never get cleaned up. What is there to like about it? How was this ever allowed? Imagine today I make an ad about dumping red 40 into the Mississippi River for a Netflix show. It’s evil and everyone knows it.
As for children, I would be strongly opposed to showing a child that commercial. It isn't hard to imagine them trying to haul buckets of bouncy balls to the roof after being ... inspired.
There is horror everywhere, and always will be until the end of our days.
SF seems to be a lot more in-flux compared to other cities, so if you don't like the scene now just wait a few years and a new one will be along :-)
It is easy to find faults with the SF bay area (politics, costs, and derivative issues), but is somewhere actually better?
EDIT: Thanks for the downvotes. It was an honest question, and I badly wanted to be informed, having given the issue in-depth consideration over the years. I wasn't being snarky.
Weather is cold and moisty...
There are thousands better places around the world. I would like to hear a pitch, why start company in SF today.
P.S: I'm sorry Lisboetas..you are already getting swamped by Digi Nomads, but it's true.
The people left there are those who like what it has become or are trapped in someway; others have moved.
Dead Comment
The Man Your Man Could Smell Like: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE
Pitch presentation: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/britton-taylor-7829292a_for-y...
Behind the scenes interview: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VDk9jjdiXJQ&t=11m40s
It was a big success and a series of similar clips followed; this one has an actual “behind the scenes” video:
Scent vacation: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PJKAr1r5zlA
Behind the scenes: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=32TZSXG2y7E
Anyone know of an alternative source, ideally without the typical internet-friendly/heavy compression?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UXS6DBD6g0
<https://tensorpix.ai/blog/video-compression-snow-confetti>
Video compression functions best where little of the shot changes frame-to-frame. This is also why rapid-cut video performs poorly online.
Deleted Comment
Sony's 2005 website for the ad: https://web.archive.org/web/20051124203345/http://www.bravia...
Sony's 2005 behind-the-scenes page: https://web.archive.org/web/20051028021817/http://www.bravia...
Fallon's (ad agency) materials: https://www.fallon.com/?s=Bravia
One of the making-of videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOpq2aD5btA
A resident point of view: https://archive.org/details/BouncyBall
https://youtu.be/ac_g4opW-UI
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=odCBml5TuNI
They made at least one more commercial [1] during the same time period and it was also inspired by awe and wonder. While it did waste paint and likely pollute the local groundwater temporarily, it was conducted in a building that was scheduled for demolition.
Paint
(1) https://youtu.be/GURvHJNmGrc?si=syS1ImP0Z2oM1btO