How an LG gram Ad Made 24 Hours Visible

How the LG gram Ad Explained Its Battery

LG used to have a reputation for making good products and struggling to tell their story. The technical case was clear enough, but finding a way to make it memorable seemed to take the company longer. Some of its more recent campaigns have made that judgment feel dated.

The LG gram ad is one example.

It’s easy to skim past a claim that a laptop lasts 24 hours. LG tried to make the number mean something by showing people working across the length of a day.

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Showing How the Hours Pass

The ad asks whether the laptop will really make it through 24 hours. It sets up a demonstration and lets the viewer watch.

Five artists took turns with the same laptop at different hours of the day. They carried one project forward in a relay. The laptop stayed on and the work picked up where the last person had left it.

With that premise, the ad has two things for the viewer to follow.

You can see how far the project has come and how much of the day is already behind it.

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Why They Used Simple Tools

The software is limited in a way that catches your attention. Nobody opens Photoshop, Illustrator or Premiere. The artists use a handful of applications so familiar you rarely give them a second look.

Notepad, Excel, Paint and PowerPoint.

At first the choice looks like a joke.

What are they going to make with that? It’s the question that pulls you into the ad. An animated project takes shape in these ordinary tools, and the work continues on a single charge.

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What the 24 Hours Include

The demonstration includes about 17 hours and 55 minutes of work in a low-power mode, and about six hours and seven minutes of downtime for things like meals, meetings and breaks.

Even if you miss those figures, you come away with a sense of a laptop staying with its users through a full day. The ad lets you feel the difference between hours on a page and the time it takes to do something.

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What If the Work Is Heavier?

Watching the relay leaves one question in my mind.

“What would happen if they used Photoshop or Premiere?”

That question gets at both the limits and the appeal of the demonstration.

The result belongs to the kind of work the artists are doing on screen. The ad gives you enough detail to see what a day on one charge can look like under those conditions.

It earns that limited claim by giving people something to watch the artists finish.

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Why the Approach Stays With You

What makes the ad memorable is the way it turns a battery specification into something you can watch. You follow the artists using their time until the day fills up.

An older LG ad might have left it at a line like this:

“Up to 24 hours of use.”

This ad gives the idea a different shape. “We used it all day, and it was still on.” The day is what I remember.