I have seen this adseveral times and have been seriously intrigued. Commercials are generally something I ignore but…something about this one has stuck with me. Maybe it is simply the power of Walt Whitman’s words. The audio is a reading of the poem done by Will Geer. The visuals seem to work with the verbal imagery for me as well.
Also, I noticed at about 27 seconds in we get the first time I recall a commercial showing what looks like two guys having a little make out session going on.
If nothing else this has made me go check out Whitman and his work in a way I have never bothered to do before.
I haven’t been overcome with a desire to go buy any Levi’s.
It’s an incredibly powerful reading of that excerpt from the poem.
It inspired me to reread it and realize why I didn’t remember liking that poem at ALL last time I read it – MAN, is that one ponderous, repetitive poem.
It IS a remarkable commercial… I’m frankly a bit surprised that anything remotely mainstream uses references, even poetic ones, to grabbing your weapons, pistols and axes… hardly PC… I’ll be waiting for the “the Levi’s commercial made me do it” defense coming to a weapons-violation case in the news soon!
I know where you are coming from typoink. When I found it online I started reading it and was amazed how repeititive it seemed. Then I started reading it out loud to myself trying my best to imitate the cadence of the performance in the commercial and tho I wasn’t anywhere near that good, it did increase my appreciation for the poem.
Then I looked it up and realized it was Will Geer reading it in the commercial.
Now I am very interested in hearing the full recording of him reading the poem. If the rest of it holds up as well as the snippets used in the commercial I bet it is amazing. I just wish I knew where to find it.
Wow, i’m surprised anyone actually likes either of those commercials. I find them incredibly idiotic and pretentious, and they tell me absolutely nothing about the product.
The thing is, we know the product. Levis jeans, they are what they are. So the point isn’t to describe the product, but to continue to tie them to youth, America, frontier spirit - you know what I mean.
The “America” spot uses an actual recording of Whitman reading his poem.
I found these commercials hard not to watch, even though I didn’t like either one at first. But regardless of whether or not I liked it, long after the commercial was over it was still knocking around in my brain. Heck, I even remembered it was a Levi’s ad.
Agreed on both. It is an incredibly moronic commerical that also uses powerful imagery and audio to create an impression. But it’s still just dumbass kids in the woods.
As i said in an earlier thread, that commercial does not make me want to go out and buy Levi’s. It makes me want to crawl into a concrete bunker and wait for the apocalypse to end, the zombies to die, and/or the radiation to return to normal levels.
I saw that ad last night and spent about an hour trying to figure out who the poet was, but it just wouldn’t come to me. I suppose I could have Googled it, but that would have entailed getting off the couch.
Show your pioneer spirit by adopting a major multinational brand identity as your own. It takes great American poetry and reduces it to “Be a Pepper / Drink Dr. Pepper.”
The major difference is that if a party of models got snowed in at the top of the Continental Divide, they’d starve to death because there wouldn’t be enough fat OR muscle mass in the camp…