Oh holy fuck this ad makes my head hurt…

Let me just state that the headline for this post is just me fucking with the folks over at Mashable for writing an article entitled, “New Droid Incredible Commercial Is Incredible But Vague” apparently just after cleaning up from a major orgasm after seeing the damn thing.  I actually love reading Mashable and do so everyday, but damn the geeks that run that joint flip out when some new tech hits the streets.  Verizon could have issued a commercial that just had some radom dude next to a flip chart of stats shaking the new phone like a baby rattle while cooing, “Look! New Droid phone!” and the writers would have lost their shit and called it “the best commercial EVAH!”

Now on to the ad… First, if you’ve read any of my other postings, you know I hate it when they just sell the steak and not the sizzle, that is, they just throw around a bunch of stats like they friggin’ mean something on their own.  This ad has some real doozies in that department, my favorite being a “1 GH Snapdragon processor.”  It reminds me of that bit from an old episode of Seinfeld where Jerry’s dad gives away the Cadillac he bought him and Jerry goes, “But it had the Northstar System!” and the dad goes, “I never used it!”

Guys, no one but people in the industry gives a shit what is inside of this damn thing.  They just want to be able to use it as a phone and have their favorite Lady Ga Ga song as a ring tone.  The rest of the crap you pile on as impressive selling just gets parroted back by your customers when their friends start making fun of them for not buying an iPhone.

Second, the look of the ad is basically a red version of the “data rain” effect used in opening titles of every Matrix movies.  That’s right, the Matrix movies that starting coming out in 1999.  You know, nothing says “cutting edge technology” to me than an 11 year old effect from a movie series that even geeks say got progressively worse with each release.

I don’t know what agency created this turd, but I’m guessing they were fed the concept from someone high up at Verizon.

VERIZON: So, here’s our new phone, it’s called… (waves hands in the air) “The Incredible”

AD GUY: It’s actually called, “The Incredible”?

VERIZON: I know, awesome right?

AD GUY: Are you not planning on coming out with any other phones ever again?  I mean, what will you call the next one, “The Incredible Plus?”

VERZION: Whatever, I won’t be here by then… Anyway, what are your ideas for the ad?

AD GUY: Well, we were thinking…

VERIZON: Yeah, fuck that… what I want to see are all the stats for the phone flying around in a sea of numbers and shit, just like the beginning of The Matrix.

AD GUY: You mean kind of like that right?

VERIZON: No, exactly like that… they probably sell the effect as a Photoshop plugin now.  It’ll be awesome!

Damn I don’t know how agency people put up with clients half the time.  I was only agency side for a year before I went back to being a client for fear of mortally wounding a paying customer and putting their head up on a spike in front of the office.

J.

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4. AT&T finally grows a pair, goes after Verizon
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