Plug into Now

Personally I really like well-put advertising campaigns. I was really fond of what The Economist did with pizza boxes last week but yesterday I came across an ama-zing internet commercial.


This is Plug into Now by the American carrier Sprint. They are advertising for their wireless network that is available to you everywhere with a special device for your computer. But that doesn't really matter here.
The advertisement does, though. It's a big pane stocked full of widgets, it's comparable to what you see when you click dashboard on a Mac or when you have the widgets function enabled in Windows Vista. But the widgets used in Plug into Now don't tell you what tomorrows weather will be like, neither they're concerned with calendar functions. No, they're all about now.

How many babies are being born? How many 911 calls are being made? How many houses are being built? How many eggs are being produced? What does the Statue Of Liberty look like at this moment? They even go as far showing how many habitable planets there are, the answer is one by the way. The underlying message is of course that you can get all of that information (and maybe even a little more) when you sign up. But if you translate it you can say something about what internet brings us. Tons of information (tons can be taken literally if you talk about egg production). There's also a small red button, I wonder what it does.

Check it out, Plug into Now.