Who is the Commodore 64 for? In the 1985 ad “We Promise you won’t use the Commodore 64 More than 24 Hours a Day”, the Commodore 64 is for the whole family, divided into familiar roles, and the machine guarantees the family’s safety and unity. Research assistant Laurel Carney at MIT pointed out that the text, “It’s 8 a.m. Do you know where your daughter is”, echoes a 1960s-80s US public service announcement scaring parents to keep tabs on the whereabouts of their children, “Do you know where your children are?” In the ad, worries about safety speaks for getting a computer – because the computer is so addictive, the whole family will be kept safely home, with dad (who seems to get very little sleep) doing both office work and stocks, the son playing games and doing homework, the younger daughter solving puzzles, the elder daughter studying the solar system, and mom looking up recipes and managing the household with a database.
Though Commodore lacked a global advertising strategy and left it to individual countries come up with their own, there was an early global pattern of focusing on the serious side of the C64, and only mentioning games as an aside.
Compare the previous ad to this: The most referenced ad today is probably the Australian “Are you Keeping up with the Commodore”, famous for its catchy jingle, the implied threat that you may will fall behind if you don’t have the computer, and the bizarre hand gesture from the C64 users.
In many European countries, Commodore gradually accepted the machine’s status as a game computer and began to advertise it as such. This circa 1987 Swedish ad makes fun of apparently delinquent youths. “Where have you been? Out. What did you do? Nothing,” with the C64 being the better alternative, young people enjoying playing video games together. The acceptance of games also made it into the C64 packaging, sometimes themed around bundled games like Batman.
Computer ads also have the feature that the dedicated computer owner – like me! – liked the ads because it said positive things about your computer in a public space. I did feel aligned with the Commodore company at the time and wanted to see more and better C64 ads.
What ads inspired you?
The full history is here: https://www.jesperjuul.net/c64/history/#obj3
Coming November 22nd, Object #4: Impossible Mission
Very good. Thank you.
The reason the ads look serious was when it came out it was serious. Only later was it seen more as a game machine. Many Gen X top programmers learned on that machine. Games were ridiculously expensive..but if you knew how to prpgram you could make your own or type them in from magazines.
Look at the QA sections of old Commodore magazines and you will see questions that sound like senior level final exam questions in most CS majors these days. Users were in general much more aware of what the machine could do.
I mean the schematics were included in the manuals…
Yes, and: The VIC-II video chip was designed for video games, so it was a margeting decision to promote the computer as serious. Yes, typing in games was a important experience that taught many to program, and there were higher expectations about what a computer was able to do…