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11:38 Dec 6th, 2009 | Notes
I’ve avoided talking about the tussle between Verizon/Motorola and Apple for some time now. I’ve ignored the attacks, claiming that the former are just trying to slap and scratch their way into a market which has already chosen its king. I’ve remained cool, calm and collected. But now, Verizon and Motorola have don’t something so incredibly stupid, arrogant and ill thought out that I can’t ignore it any longer. Just look at his ad. Instantaneously it does unthinkable. Without even trying to remain level headed and sane it appears all guns blazing and destroys what could have been half of its customers. This deliberately ad removes women as potential buyers of the Motorola Droid and at the same time calls the most popular phone in the US a “tiara wearing digitally clueless beauty pageant queen”. Good work. Verizon and Motorola have come to this conclusion: their phone is butt ugly, and there is no way in the world that it appeals to women, or anyone for that matter, more than the iPhone. This is all true of course, the Droid is incredibly ugly. There is absolutely no way you can tout its design as “industrial” or “rugged” without bursting out in uninhibited laughter. It’s ugly. So instead of highlighting the features of the Droid that women may like, such as the free turn-by-turn navigation, they decide that they don’t want women as customers at all. They are then left with a miniscule marketing demographic, now that they have decided that they don’t want women or men with taste using their phone. Verizon and Motorola have shrunk their target market down to the lonely, unshaven, jeans and sneakers wearing, unloved, sweaty male college graduates who have never been touched and who work at Blockbuster on a Saturday night. And when they shrunk their market, they forgot that these buck teethed, greasy haired, barely post-pubescent men have no money to spend on a phone that talks like a robot every time you get a phone call. Verizon and Motorola can’t face the fact that their product is not going to win. This isn’t the act of a company who is confident of success. And no, neither is this an act of a company who is being gutsy and sticking it to Apple and showing just how confident they are. Because smart companies don’t shrink their target demographic. This is the act of a company floundering to find a place for their product in a market which is beyond saturated with smart phones. So instead of customers choosing a place for the Droid, Verizon and Motorola are choosing one themselves. Because they are stupid.
1:26 Oct 31st, 2009 | Notes
There is a point at which advertising crosses the line. Microsoft has passed that line by a mile. I am generally a very liberal minded person when it comes to advertising. I believe advertising can be successfully and sensibly implemented within schools in order to balance out costs of expensive products like computers. While some may draw comparison between my ideas and Microsoft’s recent Bing campaign, there is one major difference. Mine would look like advertising. Thus lies the reason why Microsoft’s Bing campaign is so morally apprehensible. Bing is Microsoft’s search engine, and search is easy money. Search engines make money through advertisements. Those advertisements are labeled for what they are: ads. Here’s why Microsoft’s campaign is morally wrong: they haven’t applied this same principle to their middle school campaign. Microsoft has gone into a middle school teaching young children a catchy (and frankly awful) song and dance about their search engine. While dancing around in their Bing T-shirts, watching videos about Bing and singing Bing songs, their minds are being moulded and shaped using techniques they don’t recognize as advertising. Their being fed ads that don’t look like, and aren’t labeled as, ads. It’s using the plasticity of a child’s mind to shamelessly push a product. It’s clear that the children are oblivious to the tactics of the Redmond giant and that they are being brainwashed, which is what makes this so wrong. If you are going to advertise to children, do it in an honest and obvious way. Advertising could be used to lower education costs, to bring technology into the classrooms of children who otherwise couldn’t afford it and would live without it. What this has reinforced in the minds of those against advertising is that the industry can’t be trusted to be sensible when dealing with children, when with the proper oversights it could be. Microsoft and the middle school have lowered the bar of advertising, and it will take a lot to raise it back up.
7:33 Aug 4th, 2009 | Notes
I think Palm have forgotten how advertising is supposed to work. In the perfect ad you show as much of your product as possible, from the best angles, showing the best features, and making sure the ad itself gets to the point. I viewed this beautifully metaphorcal and poetic ad for the Palm Pre and was instantly filled with a soothing euphoria. I was so lost in the graceful anecdotal story line that I missed the one second of footage that actually depicted the Pre. At this point I can’t help quoting Devin Coldewey from TechCrunch: The ads may have been effective if they were promoting something else, I can’t think of what — lotion, maybe, or a really nice oven. So Palm, if you wish to sell phones, don’t show me a woman in a nightie charming me with her calming metaphorical story of a juggler in a park. Instead, show me the Pre in action. Simple. |
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