5 February 2008: Cartwheel with Vodafone

As I assemble my portfolio on Vodafone, I found myself returning back to its mobile internet ad entitled 'Cartwheel.' Every time that I watch this ad, I find myself captivated, intrigued, and happy. My first memory of Vodafone was when I participated in the Notre Dame Dublin program in the spring of 2003. It was the first week in Dublin and I required a mobile phone. I missed home and felt exceptionally disoriented, but purchased this 'new' mobile carrier because it had the best text rate between carriers. It's red logo arrests attention and the encircled apostrophe represented a conversation within a circle - a circle of friends. At that time, that is what I needed. When I view this Vodafone ad though, it arrests my other lense - that of an art film lover.

The ad starts with a woman in red tights laying on a couch. She draws my attention, reminding me much of a mime that one might see in Paris. Mimes are associated with entertainment and silence. As the lilting piano music plays, it reminds me of the adagio movement of a piano sonata. The piano plays on my musician heart, making me immediately feel both relaxed and engaged. This feeling is further supported by the fact that I use to swim every morning and the lifeguard would turn the radio to a classical station that always played piano music during that time. As the ad continued, the woman continues to go to a variety of places, the store, the bus stop, the ATM, the bus, and the coffee shop. She looks very lonely and quiet. I feel her loneliness and sympathize with her waiting. When living in Ireland, you wait for everything. This ad reminds me of that time in Ireland (which I have addressed before), so now I have attached my love of music and my happiness of Ireland, despite its faults, to this ad. The woman continues to travel throughout the city, on the bus, swinging around a street pole (reminding me of Gene Kelly in singing in the rain, which is the climax of that film and one of the happiest moments, and seemingly a turning point in this ad), and waiting on the upper story of a building at sunset (I love sunset and have always seen this as a fantastic way to spend an evening, especially when you evoke my happiness of international to the ad). I feel that she is getting happier. Dame Judy Dench's voice over during this moment reads like poetry.

"Its the rest of the time. The hours spent not really doing anything. The hanging around time. The A to B time. The bits of time that sit between the more interested bits of time."

As an art lover, my intellectual sentiments are intrigued. The mime, the exoticism, the cinematography. This ad plays like an art film, which I started attending also when I lived in Dublin. Art films make me feel engaged and I always leave them feeling more educated and that I am a better person in the world because of them.

Suddenly, the ad stops with a low piano chord and makes the 'rewind' noise from a VHS tape. You see everything reverse. The piano music then speeds up and the orchestra is added with sixteenth notes and a chance in key from minor to major, which indicates motion and happiness. The clips of the woman doing all of these things are truncated and spliced together such that as the music speeds up, so to does the fast forward of these spliced moments. It looks like the woman is doing a cartwheel. Never having been able to do a cartwheel myself, I have always wanted to do one. However, it indicates the joy of childhood. A time when time doesn't matter.

"What if you could take all of these moments, all this ordinary time, and turn it in to something extraordinary? The internet is now truly mobile so that you can use it whenever you want. Vodafone. Make the most of now."

I leave feeling like I am a better person in this world because of this ad. That Vodafone can turn something that is exotic and silent into something that is moving, creative, active, and child-like. I think I shall go and watch the ad again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9Vy-uXBE6M