The School will shortly be recreating the famous advertisement on video, which will be shared on this website and on its YouTube channel. Now, an American woodworker studying at the renowned Chippendale International School of Furniture in Scotland has recreated the famous chair in spalted cherry for a new generation who may only dimly know what an audio cassette tape looks like. In the advertisement, entitled “Blown Away Guy,” his hair, necktie, and dry martini are all buffeted backwards by the volume of sound. To a theme of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries, a reclining man in a Le Corbusier chair is seen being blown backwards by the power of sound coming from speakers in front of him. Perhaps a future headphone ad will become as iconic as the Maxell tape ad.ĭo you have a favorite audio or music ad? Tell us all about it in the comments section.It was an advertisement that became an icon of pop culture, transforming a humble audio tape from Japanese electronics company Maxell into a global phenomenon. Headphone sound is inherently more intimate, so buyers care more about their headphones' sound. Sound is there to fill up empty spaces and rarely engages the listener. Now that most mainstream speaker buyers are stuck in multitasking mode, sound quality is irrelevant, because sound is just background to other activities. In those days iPods were just music players there was no texting, video, games, or streaming, just sound. Again, the theme is all about movement and total immersion in the sound of music.
MAXELL BLOWN AWAY TV
Tape was big business in the 1970s and 1980s, and sound-quality advances (and creative marketing) were crucial to the success of tape manufacturers.Īpple's early iPod TV and print ads with silhouetted dancers grooving to their iTunes are definitely contenders for iconic status. Back then it wasn't just a handful of audiophiles who cared about sound quality Maxell's ad catered to the sound aspirations of millions of tape consumers.
People loved the ad because we all identified with the concept. The other thing I love about the ad is the man is really listening he is at one with his sound, but multitasking was still decades away. The Maxell ad was so popular it was expanded into a TV ad campaign. Sound never stands still, it's constantly in motion, and the image makes that perfectly clear. The photo is by Steven Steigman, and there have been endless parodies of the image over the years.Ĭommunicating great sound in a black-and-white still image isn't easy, and the ad's creators' achievement has never been surpassed. Maxell's "Blown Away Guy" campaign debuted in 1979, and it was perfect: the hipster is on the right side of the picture slouching in a massive Le Corbusier chair, with a table lamp and martini glass "blown away" by the sound of a JBL L100 speaker on the left side of the frame. CNET's Geoff Morrison used the above image from a Maxell tape ad in his " Music multitasking: How 'background' listening enhances life" blog post a few weeks ago, and that image really took me back.
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