"What's on your PowerBook?" Meet the Jesuit who appeared in an Apple ad

The ad above was selected as one of the best Apple ads by an editor at Huffington Post.  The Jesuit priest — Creighton University’s Fr. Don Doll, who appeared in it (along with rocker Todd Rundgren) — dropped an e-mail about the experience to CNS:

In an email titled “A bit of Creighton in Apple history” and sent to Catholic News Service late last week by Creighton’s communications department, Father Doll told the story: “Here’s how I was invited to be in the Apple campaign ‘What’s on your PowerBook?’ Creighton graduate, Christian Wolfe, who had excelled in my publication design course, was an Los Angeles BBDO account executive with the Apple account who called asking if I had a black clerical suit, and if I would consider being in an Apple ad campaign.  I called my Jesuit superiors in Milwaukee to see if there were any issues with my appearance in an ad. They didn’t have any.

“Apple flew me out first class, put me in in a San Francisco boutique hotel.  We went out to the little, formerly Catholic church now a nondenominational wedding chapel, in Tiburon, across the bay from San Francisco, where I met Todd Rundgren (whom I had never heard of before!), and Michael O’Brien, the photographer, whom I did meet years earlier as an award winning National Press Photographer.

“Michael O’Brien exposed 76 rolls of 120 film over 2-3 hours. The ad was run in black and white and color in numerous national magazines. I received numerous calls from former students who saw the ad.”

And, Father Doll, an award-winning photographer himself, noted that he was ”pleased with the ad as it showed a priest in a good light.”

For those who are curious, some of the things listed on Fr. Doll’s PowerBook included: wedding homilies, grant proposal for a book, scans of pictures taken in Ireland, and “design for my Christmas card.”