Barely a month after Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer, the Buckeyes and Ohio Stadium were
featured in a Nike commercial, Ohio State appears in another dramatic ad advertising one of
America's biggest brands.
Hot off a season of jaw-dropping performances watched online by millions around the world, the Ohio State University Marching Band appears in a recent Apple iPad Air commercial.
Set to an audio clip of Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, the ad touts the iPad’s unique uses. Williams quotes Walt Whitman’s O Me! O Life! behind a montage of athletes, scientists, artists and others using iPads for much more than just surfing Facebook.
The band is shown marching in full uniform and, later in the ad, while using the iPad to help create a memorable dinosaur-shaped formation from earlier in the season.
When choosing performers to include in the commercial, Apple surely didn’t overlook the marching band’s multitude of widespread fans, who predictably helped a YouTube video of the ad spread like wildfire across social media platforms.
The band's iPad use is no act, though: This season, paper charts were replaced by iPads loaded with the app Drillbook Next, which helps the band perform more complex drills.
Band director Jon Waters told The Dispatch in November that he expects all OSU band members to have an iPad – paid for by donations to the band – for the 2014-15 football season.