Justin Long, the actor who played the Mac in the highly successful and long-running ‘Get a Mac’ ad campaign, is now appearing in an ad for the Chinese Android smartphone maker Huawei. Huawei’s ad agency told Campaign that Long’s starring role in the Apple ads was the main reason Huawei chose him.
The ‘Get a Mac’ ad campaign, which launched ten years ago, featured Long as a Mac while John Hodgman played the Windows PC. It ran for three years, with 66 ads aired during that time. The team behind it recently reminisced about ‘the excruciating seven-month quest for an idea that Steve Jobs didn’t hate.’
“It certainly was key when we considered Justin as a possible partner for Huawei,” she said in an email. In fact, Grizzel says the original concept “was a much more emboldened approach to call out the previous relationship with Apple,” but that Long and the client encouraged them to find “a nice middle ground where that idea is inferred as opposed to explicitly stated.”
The campaign was not only a hugely successful sales tool, it also created fun ads that people genuinely enjoyed watching. Sadly, we can’t say the same for the first of what is said to be a series of ads for Huawei. The actor is great, but the script … isn’t.
Long plays himself, interviewing for the role of directing Huawei’s ads, with a silent phone playing the part of the interviewer.
