"Blown Away" (US)
In the 1980s, Maxell became an icon of pop culture when it produced advertisements popularly known as "Blown Away Guy" for its line of audio cassettes. The campaign began as a two-page advertising spread in Rolling Stone magazine in 1980. The photo shows a man sitting low in a (Le Corbusier Grand Confort LC2[13]) high armed chair (on the right side of the spread) in front of, and facing, a JBL L100 speaker (the left side of the spread). His hair and necktie, along with the lampshade to the man's right and the martini glass on the low table to the man's left, are being blown back by the tremendous sound from speakers in front of him—supposedly due to the audio accuracy of Maxell's product. The man is shown desperately clinging to the armrests but defiantly looking ahead at the source of the music through sunglasses.
The ad campaign was conceived by Art Director Lars Anderson. Steve Steigman was the photographer. Steigman wanted a male model with long hair in order to show the effect of the wind, but when such a model could not be found on the day of the shoot, they used the makeup artist who was hired for the shoot, Jac Colello.[14]
The same concept was used for television spots in 1981 which ran throughout the 1980s. These commercials showed nearly the same image as the print ad, but with the chair, a drink and nearby lamp all being pushed away from the stereo by the strong force of the sound waves, though the man calmly catches his drink before it slides off the end table.[15] Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" was used for music.
The "blown away guy" image became quite popular, and has been copied and parodied numerous times, including in the 1992 John Ritter film Stay Tuned (where a character's head is blown off by a "Max-Hell" tape), in the 1995 episode "Marge Be Not Proud" of the animated Sitcom the Simpsons, in the 2005 episode "Model Misbehavior"[16] of animated sitcom Family Guy, and in the 2010 movie Jackass 3D, where Ryan Dunn sits in a chair while the blast from a jet engine sends the set blowing away. The comic strip Bloom County also parodied the ad in showing one of its characters, Milo Bloom, at home watching MTV.[17]
In 2005, Maxell revived the "Blown Away Guy" ad campaign. As Maxell now made blank DVDs and CDs, headphones, speakers, and blank audio and video tape, the ads were updated with photos of iPods and accessories underneath the image. "Get blown away" was the headline, while the copy urged consumers to use Maxell accessories to "make your small iPod sound like a huge audio system".
"Misheard" (UK)
In 1989, advertising agency HHCL was commissioned by Hitachi Maxell to make two UK TV advertisements for its audio cassette range.[18] Both feature music fans, dressed appropriately for each genre, listening to two popular songs but mishearing the lyrics. The fans peel away cue cards, copying the style of Bob Dylan in Dont Look Back. The first ad[19] uses the Desmond Dekker song "Israelites", with the second[20] using "Into the Valley" by The Skids. In both ads, the conclusion is that if the songs were recorded on Maxell tapes, the fidelity would be much greater and the proper lyrics could be heard.
Additionally, a separate ad on the theme of the American Blown Away campaign was filmed for the UK, with musician Peter Murphy of the group Bauhaus as the man in the chair, and Night on Bald Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky as the music.
