I love Amazon’s Kindle ads. (I’ll be watching TV — muting every single commercial with my remote — when I’ll suddenly shout out “Kindle!”) It’s always fascinating to see them trying to capture the mystique of the Kindle. Here’s my list of some of the very best moments.
The Kindle has its own page on YouTube (at youtube.com/Kindle ), so every time I visit it, I end up watching all the other cool Kindle ads that I haven’t seen. One of my favorites shows a little boy telling his grandmother what he wants in the book that sbe’s going to give him for a Christmas gift. (“Mayan temples. Or race cars. Or spelunking… Or martians. Or any kind of alien, really…”) The joke is that his wise grandmother is able to give him all of those things — by giving the boy his own Kindle, so he can download any ebook he wants!
It’s exciting to see digital readers making the “big time” of network television. But I thought it was funny that there was another Kindle ad that had an even stranger connection to Christmas that was much more subtle. The official title of the ad was “Zest” — it’s the one with shots of the Kindle in everyday life. In the ad, the Kindle was everywhere — on a bus, in a jewelry drawer, in a back pocket, getting licked by a dog…
But another shot shows Cheerios splashing across the screen of a Kindle — and they’re covering the page of another ebook. It’s Mini Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella, the sixth book in a series of funny books about life as a shopaholic. And in this one she ponders the next generation of shoppers, starting with her two-year-old daughter Minnie. The Kindle in the ad has turned to a poignant page where, as her daughter leaves a card for Santa in a wishing well, the narrator remembers leaving her own greedy Christmas letters.
…long and involved, with illustrations and pictures cut out of catalogs, just in case he got confused.A pair of pink-faced girls of about ten, all giggly and whispery, are posting their wishes, and just the sight of them gives me a rush of nostalgia. It seems wrong not to join in. I might jinx it or something.
Dear Father Christmas, I find myself writing on a card. It’s Becky here again. I pause and think for a bit, and then quickly scribble down a few things.
I mean, only about three. I’m not greedy or anything.
Minnie is drawing earnestly all over her card and has got felt-tip on her hands and her nose.
“I’m sure Father Christmas will understand what you mean,” I say gently, taking it from her….
Reading that, it made me wonder what would’ve happened if she’d gotten a Kindle for Christmas instead. I once joked that maybe Amazon was sending hidden messages in the ebooks they were displaying on the Kindle’s screen in their ads. In this case, the message would be about shopping on Amazon. But I finally concluded it was just Amazon’s way of recommending some good books…
And by the way, remember that you can also download the cheerful, bouncing song from this ad for free from Amazon.com. It’s a song called “Lovers’ Cravings” by a British music producer who goes by the name of Bibio!