Potential

Say what you will about Microsoft, but I do like the images in their “Your Potential, Our Passion” ad campaign. (I will admit, though, that I’m weary of hearing the slogan during sponsor breaks on NPR.) The print ads feature people doing everyday things like waiting for the subway or walking through the park, but you see their potential goals or dreams superimposed around them. One of my favorites shows two boys sitting in a treehouse as if it were the cockpit of a jumbo jet. If I could make my own ad, it might picture me out on the street listening to my discman, doing something ordinary like waving to a friend or hailing a cab, but in my mind I’d be conducting from the orchestra pit in a Broadway theater, cueing the star for her next vocal entrance. Something like that. I doubt a musical theater career is within my current realm of possibility–potential and passion aside–but I do enjoy the power of a vivid imagination.