New Bravia Ad and Managing Expectations

Fallon and Sony finally released the "Paint" spot for Bravia -- one of the most anticipated commercials on my memory that follows the wildly successfull "Bouncing Balls" spot. It's a great ad, no doubt. The question is whether they should've blogged about it in advance. Teasing is one thing. Putting up awesome pictures and building up everyone's expectations is another. The blog will definitely attract crowds to the spot, but now "Paint" has to fight an uphill battle of being compared not only to competition, not only to the original superb "Balls", but also against everybody's own idea of what the spot should've become.

But I'm just thinking out loud here. The clown is lovely. The ad, as I said, is great. Bob Garfield likes it, too. Speaking of Bob Garfield, here's an interesting piece of trivia from his review:

"The real genius of "Balls" was to defeat the structural problem that had forever crippled TV advertising for TVs: the picture is only as good as the set you're viewing at the time. Even if the advertised product is superior, the superiority can't be conveyed. Unless.

Unless you use visual shorthand, and photograph bold primary and secondary colors under the most dramatic and unusual circumstances you can think of -- and as translucently as possible. Those colors break through on even the crappiest set, with all credit (maybe unfairly) going to the advertiser. Wow. How often is an idea literally brilliant?"

Update (an hour later): The first comment is in and it's a thumb down. I'm opening comments directly under this post, then.