The iStory:
In May of 1999, while enjoying a round of drinks with friends, well...perhaps the story is easier told using a script format. The name's of the people in the story will be changed to keep folks anonymous. So here it is. The unabridged story of how iBrator created a buzz in 1999:
A Jeff ("Jeff"), Keith (then Sleepless Knights Media), and Jane sit at a round bar table enjoying a few drinks.
JANE: So my boyfriend slept over for the first time last night. We had an..."incident..."
KEITH: What kind of "incident"?
JANE: Well, I pulled out the bed to my sleeper couch and...I sort left my vibrator in there...
JEFF & KEITH smirk...Jane smiles deviously.
KEITH: Ouch...what did he say to that?
JANE: He just looked at it. He really didn't say much.
JEFF: Wow.
KEITH: What did you say?
JANE: I told him, "don't worry sweetie--they come in all kinds of colors"..
KEITH: (incredulous) They Do?!?!? I didn't know that! What "flavor" is yours?
JANE: Raspberry...kind of mauve color...
KEITH: Neat. Just like an iMac.
JEFF: No. That would be an iBrator.
Laughter.
But that's not where it ends folks...oh no...a few nights later Keith is laying in bed watching television and a commercial for the Apple iMac hits the screen. The advertisement featured flying colored iMacs and the Rolling Stones song "She's a Raibow" as a bed. The bulb went on...one month later, the first iBrator spoof ad "Say Hellohhhh to iBrator" or our version of "Colors" made its debut at the New York City After Effects Special Interest Group run by Brian Maffitt. What followed became internet history.
The success of the first iBrator ad spurred Keith, Jeff, and 3D artist Peter Bradley to team with actress Lisa Catherine Clark to make spoofs of the other Apple television ads of the time replacing Jeff Goldblum with our iSpokesperson Lisa.
Finally, with a little prompting, the i4 ad came to life with the patient frame by frame rotoscope job by Dan Nocera and an amazing soundtrack re-creation by Jude Breidenbach.
Enjoy the art and media that follows in the pages linked on the above left, and party like its 1999... |
