Gizmodo have posted up YouTube copies of British Mac ads. Frankly being British (I’ve not used that word for a long time) and living in England I’m not really impressed. There’s just something very.. er.. British about them. I think more than anything it’s the accent. British people, to me atleast, just don’t sound convincing from a marketing perspective when talking about computers and the Internet (Sorry Sir Tim).

For example my favourite advert of the bunch is the ‘pie chart’ one. Here’s the British one with Peep Show actors Robert Webb and David Mitchell.

And the original US version: 

Now is it just me or does the phrase “Just kicking it” make the second one much funnier than the long winded multiple-phrase first one? Perhaps the US ads should be shown in Britain and the British ones in the US. Today’s youth in Britain and by that I mean 30 something’s too know what “just kicking it” means and are more likely to use that phrase than “general tomfoolery”. That said the Mac adverts are generally targetted as more intelligent and more affluent types.

Take the people who read the menori blog. They’re intelligent types (you know you are) and they’re very geographically dispersed.

Here’s the geo-location map from Google Analytics for the menori blog for the past few months. You’ll see that there’s a concentration on either coast of the US (no surprise really) and on this small piece of land called the British Isles. Infact the biggest dot on the map is there. Perhaps because it has the greatest concentration of intelligence. (Oooh controversial). Personally I’m most impressed by the number of Chinese, Japanese and Korean visitors.

And to maintain the theme of the far-east (I suppose the US is far-east if you’re actually in Tokyo) here’s the same advert but from Japan. Maybe someone who speaks Japanese can tell me what the ‘punchline of this one is’?

 And just to complete the circle here’s a remixed Japan / US version of the virus advert

He he.

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