For example, all of the commercials for Motorola’s smart phone the Droid contain a disclaimer that the word is actually a trademark of Lucasfilm. Granted George Lucas gave us R2D2 and C3P0 but who knew you could own a word. If these disclaimers came along after Droid’s marketing began you can bet Motorola didn’t.

Now a disclaimer has appeared on a series of AT&T commercials. The spots show huge pieces of orange fabric being unrolled over buildings and well-known landmarks to illustrate how completely AT&T’s mobile network blankets the country.

The spots are visually engaging and illustrate the point in a unique way. But now at the very end in small type it says, “The artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude have no direct or indirect association with AT&T.”

Huh?!

Some quick research reveals that Christo and Jeanne-Claude are husband and wife artists who have created giant art installations around the world by wrapping entire buildings and geographic areas in different types of cloth. Sound familiar?!

Amongst other things the couple has wrapped the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art; an oceanfront beach in Newport, Rhode Island; and a large part of New York’s Central Park.  You can see pictures at their Web site.

The artists donated the merchandising rights from the New York project to the charitable foundation Nurture New York’s Nature and the Arts which shared proceeds with The Central Park Conservancy. Now AT&T has stolen the idea for an ad campaign.  Silly me! I always thought they called it ad creative for a reason. I’ve never heard it called ad copying.

I realize that modifying someone else’s concept isn’t a new idea, but taking the work of two artists for a cellular network commercial just seems wrong. At the very least the campaign should pay homage to them or make a donation to a charitable organization they have supported.

Instead they get a disclaimer.

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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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Everybody back?  Good, good.  If you didn’t bother, the word basically means to blow something out of proportion for effect.  It’s a great literary device that lets you just say the craziest shit without having to back it up because it’s understood that whatever you said was never meant to be taken literally.

However, a little goes a long way. The world of advertising never seems to get that concept though.  Plus, advertising is one of those professions where everybody assumes you’re lying your ass off already, so if you start throwing around hyperbole like a newborn at a family picnic, you’re just going to start pissing people off.

For instance, here’s one that Verizon did this season:

Verizon Wireless – Holiday

Right out of the chute, “Verizon Wireless is the best destination for holiday gifts.” Really? Try explaining that to your 5 year old when you give him a phone instead of a bike for Christmas.  Sure, he’ll feel like a pimp for a bit, but when the other kids want to go ride bikes, the best he can do is call a cab.  So Verizon Wireless is really A destination for holiday gifts, but I don’t think it even made the top 10 best places for holiday gifts.

Other variations on this one is saying something is the “number one source” for one thing another.  It doesn’t matter what, they’ve apparently checked into it and called the union and they are officially the number one source for left handed eyebrow pluckers with your state motto written on it in Mandarin.

Here’s another one from the sporting goods retailer, The Sports Authority:

Sports Authority – Holiday – Best Offer EVER

Again, right out of the gate, “starting today at the Sports Authority, our BEST OFFER EVER!”  Ever? Really? Are you sure you want to throw that one down now?  I mean, ever is a pretty long time.  I’m sure you could look up your old offers and compare notes there, but “ever” means the future as well and I would hate to think that you peaked this soon.

I’m not being dense here, I’m just trying to make a point.  The “best EVER” stuff is part of the vernacular right now and it’s really damn annoying. Every restaurant, every movie, every song, etc. etc. is the BEST EVER!  For fuck sake, one, you sound like you’re 12 and two, you’re usually way the hell off target.  Sure, The Hangover was funny, but it wasn’t “the funniest movie EVER!”  No, not ever… maybe this year… sure, I could go for that, but ever? No, I’m sorry, you clearly just need to see more movies.

* * *

The whole word seems to be into doing this these days.  I’ve noticed some of my fellow bloggers are big fans of really taking things to such heights that you would think they ran out of adjectives or something.  The other day, one of the guys over at Nerve (one of my favorite sites) was commenting on Tara Reid’s spread in Playboy and called it an “atrocity upon mankind” (original NSFW post here)  Wow, that’s a bit much, isn’t it?  I mean, we’re not talking about the Nazis here, it’s Playboy airbrushing some photos like they always do.  I called them on this and their reply was, “yeah, that’s the joke. thanks for playing along.”  No, that’s not the joke, the pictures are the joke, that’s just you over doing it a bit for the circumstances.  Ease up, grab a Thesaurus.

I remember reading somewhere (I can’t remember where) when some hipster reviewer was talking trash about a recent release and he called it “an abortion.”  First of all, gross; second of all, no, no it wasn’t.  That movie could be the worst thing every made and it would be a far cry from an abortion. I don’t care what side of that argument you come down on, it’s just a fucking movie.

I put this up there with the abuse the word “literally” lately. “OMG, like his head literally exploded.”  Sorry, what? His head exploded?  No, of course not, but that’s not what the word means.  Just back it off a tad, no one will think any less of you, promise.

Again, the humor isn’t lost on me… I get it, I really do. You’re making it bigger than it needs to be for effect, awesome.  But you do it all the damn time.  Every damn review, every comment, every time you eat out, etc. etc. Seriously, everything can’t be the best or the worst EVER.  You can’t just use this valuable tool at every turn or you just sound like a douche bag.

Unless you’re talking about anything with Sarah Jessica Parker in it, and then it’s just a fact that it’s the worst abortion ever.

J.

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In Q4 of 2009, Verizon decided it was going to go head first towards AT&T with a clever little campaign that compared coverage areas.  This is not necessarily a new concept for wireless carriers.  I can remember seeing coverage area maps on pamphlets back when I worked at Radio Shack during college.  However, this one was a little different because it was comparing the “3G” service area coverage.  Here was one of the earlier ads that introduced this concept:

You have to admit, it’s a pretty powerful little idea.  Not only is the map pretty damning, but they threw the “There’s an app for that” line from the iPhone commercials right back in their smug little faces.  It was like they were saying, “hey, nice phone, too bad your service sucks so bad.”  I know you’ve seen these ads, Verizon has been running them constantly, with new variations coming out every week, including some effed up holiday versions that use the “Island of Misfit Toys” from Rudolf (it even had a stop-motion iPhone dancing around in it, damn!).

I personally thought the ads were great, but my problem with them had more to do with the media buy associated with the campaign.  You see, I live in one of the major metro areas where AT&T has great 3G coverage (Los Angeles), but they were obviously running these ads on a national level.  I would look at the map comparison and just say, “so what, Verizon? You’ve got a pretty map, shut up about it already!”  I’m actually on AT&T not because of their fabulous coverage in the states, but because I can keep using my phone when I travel abroad for speaking engagements, international crime sprees, etc.  I could personally give a shit if my 3G coverage extended to Bung Hole, Nebraska, so I thought that Verizon needed to concentrate elsewhere in the country where that map was really making a point.

But wow, did these ads piss of AT&T.  So much so that AT&T even tried to sue Verizon to stop the ads because they claimed that the maps misrepresented AT&T’s true coverage area since they were just comparing apples to apples (or 3G to 3G).  The judge threw out the lawsuit (as he should have, really), Verizon kept coming out with more ads for the rest of the year, and AT&T just looked like a little bitch for awhile there.

Then AT&T sent in a Wilson brother:

AT&T was finally going to make the point it was trying to make in court, which was, “Sure, Verizon has more 3G coverage, but AT&T covers 98% of the US with it’s regular coverage, so stuff it, jackass!”  Plus they were going to call out the fact that their 3G was faster AND you could run data and voice at the same time.  AT&T did a shitload of these ads across TV, radio, and I’m sure in other formats I haven’t even seen.

It was like these two crazy kids were running for student office and Verizon was part of the popular kids and AT&T was in band and never had a shot, but dammit, he was going to try! The little band nerd was going to stay up all night and make smart and funny posters, banners, and button just to get his name out there because he knew that friggin’ rich kid thought she had it in the bag just for showing up, ha ha!  Sure, he lost anyway, but that’s not the point, he tried!  Or something…

Then, the other day while driving home from work on the last day before Christmas vacation, I heard this ad come on the radio:

ATT Mobile – LA Maps

Holy shit!  It’s like AT&T heard my bitching and actually went to the trouble of doing a regionally targeted creative for the Los Angeles market.  Now that’s some damn effort, AT&T!  Way to put your nuts on the glass and tell Verizon, “hey, screw you, man!”

I have to admit, I got a little hard… seriously, a little media wood over an AT&T ad.  See? This is the shit I’m talking about.  Companies putting in some damn effort and intelligence into their campaigns and not letting other companies walk all over them.

Did Microsoft do that with Apple for the “Get a Mac” ads? Not really.  Sure, they did the “I’m a PC” ads and the ads where people got laptops for way cheaper than a Mac, but it took them friggin’ forever to get them out there and when they did, it wasn’t the big “Hey, fuck you, Apple! You get viruses and crash all the damn time, so eat it, ass!” that I was looking for.  Nope, it was pretty much what you would expect from Microsoft, functional, but not flashy.  The cool kids won again.

But AT&T, sacked up and showed up on the seen, bitches.  Nice work guys, you’re going to need that bad ass attitude in 2010 when the iPhones hit the Verizon network.  Wow, that’s going to be some nasty stuff.  When things get tough at my day job, I’m going to sit back and thank the gods of marketing that I don’t have to work for AT&T, because… damn.

J.

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Here was the ad that introduced most humans to this new technical wonder:

So, I get it, the ad is making fun of the Mac’s style of ads with their little black text on a white background and the cutesy music that you claim you hate, but you end up buying anyway because the damn thing gets stuck in your head.  Plus, you have the bonus of an iPhone/iPod/iEverything joke from the late nineties in the form of every sentence start with “iDon’t”.

Yup, that’s some pretty clever stuff there, gang. I can tell you put a lot of thought in that over there. Way to stick it to the establishment, brother.

Here’s the problem though, all the stuff you call out as a problem, isn’t really much of a problem to the common folks.  That is, what you just presented to a lot of people was a really weak argument for switching from the iPhone to the Droid.

Let’s take a look at them, shall we?

- I don’t have a real keyboard

Yeah, that was kind of the point though, right?  I mean, the iPhone was designed not to have a keyboard so you wouldn’t run into all the problems caused by having a bunch of little moving parts on something that lives in your pocket most of the time.  I know some people are into the whole tactile, button pushing thing, but so was I before I got my iPhone and I adapted pretty quick.

- I don’t run simultaneous apps

This one is just kinda geeky and maybe even a little incorrect.  I mean, I know what you’re trying to say, the iPhone really only runs one thing at a time for the most part, but how often is that really an issue?  It is a damn phone after all and most of the time I’m happy that I can keep my music playing in the background while I’m looking at a map.  If you really need something that runs a bunch of simultaneous applications, then maybe kick back over to a laptop, that’s what they’re for in the first place.

- I don’t take 5 megapixel pictures

Yeah, that’s because the iPhone really isn’t a camera.  I know, I know, they all have little cameras in them these days, but still, it’s a friggin’ phone… the camera is just kind of a nice to have.  If I want really good pictures, I use an actual camera.

- I don’t customize

This sounded like a big deal until I remembered I wasn’t a 12 year old girl and could give a shit about customizing my phone.  You want to make your phone look pretty? Get a nice case, d-bag.

- I don’t run widgets

Yeah, and I hardly miss them either.  I remember when they started the whole widget thing on Windows and it was the first thing I turned off.  Annoying little wastes of space.

- I don’t allow open development

Again, a little geeky fellas.  First of all, who gives a shit? The iPhone has like a bajillion apps these days and while Apple is a little deutschland deutschland with its approval cycle, it stills let a crapload of great apps onto the market on a regular basis.

- I don’t take pictures in the dark

Again, that’s because it’s not really a camera.  You want pictures in the dark, go get a camera. Most of the time people are just making that goofy fish lip face at an arm’s length anyway, so the need for high-resolution, properly lit camera work is a little over played.

- I don’t have interchangeable batteries

You know, when I was considering my iPhone, this was actually one of the things that bothered me about their setup, the fact that you can’t replace the batteries.  Then I remembered, over the years, with the many, many phones I’ve owned, I can only remember once when I actually needed a spare battery and by the time I actually needed to replace a battery that wasn’t charging like it used to, it was time to ditch the phone anyway.

* * *

My point in all of this is, who the hell is this ad for?  The easy answer is “early adopters”, that geeky subset of users that just buy anything new and shiny before they work all the bugs out just because it is, new and shiny.  But then I thought about it a little more; if this is aimed at early adopters, what’s with the media buy?

I used this particular version of the Droid ad because it bleeds into a baseball game.  The first time I actually saw this ad, I was watching a Sunday night football game.  So, maybe you’ll catch some of the early adopters during sports, but probably not a lot of that version of the early adopter even know what “open source development” is in the first place. That set is over watching that hot chick on G4 talk about video games.

Also, they bought a TON of media time for this campaign. Not just for this spot, but for all of the spots in the campaign, plus a boat load of radio, outdoor, and a bunch of shit I probably haven’t even seen.  I haven’t bought traditional media in awhile, but last time I looked, the early adopter set was a pretty small market and you’re casting a net like you’re selling a new burger at McDonald’s.

I don’t have the media plan in front of me, but I get the feeling that what we’re looking at is two very big companies with two very big budgets that really needed to swing their corporate junk around to get people’s attention off the iPhone for awhile.

Well, good friggin’ luck with that, guys.  The one thing you forget to do to make the Droid a direct competitor to the iPhone is make it cute.  Ugh, yeah, I know… I hated even writing that. But that’s what it’s going to come down to in the end. You can make your little wonder of a phone do all the same shit the iPhone does and more, but until you can convince a regular, good old fashioned, thong-wearin’ chick to buy one of them, you’re only going to sell the things to the geek set.  While there may be a lot of geeks running the show these days (trust me, I’m a member of the Blade Runner fan club, here), there are a bunch more chicks that love their phones.

Just sayin’, maybe next time spend a little less time measuring up to the other boys and more time learning how to impress your date.

J.

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