Verizon has launched a new ad for the Motorola Droid, “Pretty.”
Electronista reports, “The new spot directly attacks the iPhone and calls Apple’s handset a ‘digitally clueless pageant queen,’ making fun of its focus on style and even mocking the glass case Apple used to display the phone at its launch in 2007.”
MacDailyNews Take: Focus on style? Just because iPhone has style, doesn’t mean that Apple focuses on it. If anything, Apple focuses on the apps available for iPhone. Something with which, along with style, the brick heavy Droid simply cannot compete.
Electronista continues, “It meanwhile thrives on the Droid’s powerful, masculine image and, among other things, suggests that the smartphone is ‘racehorse duct-taped to a Scud missile fast.'”
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“Verizon tonight cut deep by launching a new ad for the Motorola Droid,” Electronista reports.
“The new spot directly attacks the iPhone and calls Apple’s handset a ‘digitally clueless pageant queen,’ making fun of its focus on style and even mocking the glass case Apple used to display the phone at its launch in 2007,” Electronista reports.
MacDailyNews Take: If Verizon has decided that the best way to compete with iPhone is to weakly try and fail to emasculate it, then Verizon is clueless, desperate, fearful, and stupid.
Have Small Penis Syndrome? Get a Motorola Droid from Verizon!
Besides Verizon’s and Motorola’s obvious issues, this is really a poor marketing strategy. The geniuses at Verizon are basically saying, “Hey, you 51% of the U.S. population who are female, these aren’t the Droids you’re looking for.” What’s next, Verizon, marketing Droid only to blue collar men? Way to minimize your own addressable market, dummies. By the way, you 51% of the U.S. population who are female plus all of the men who can recognize a complete platform with a vibrant ecosystem vs. yet another device fighting over Apple’s table scraps in the quest to become the SanDisk of smartphones, the iPhone 3GS is for you. The “S” is for speed.
Unless Verizon is looking to deliver highly-targeted Viagra and Enzyte ads, the only other thing we can think of is that maybe Verizon subconsciously wants Droid to fail, so they’ll be forced to finally wake up, forget about their craptastic V-Cast and dreams of other proprietary over-priced, under-featured services, and sign on Steve Jobs’ dotted line like they should have in the first place.
Apple should, and likely will, ignore these ads, since they’re not stupid like Microsoft.
And, a Scud missile is an inaccurate Soviet Cold War-era lumbering piece of junk deployed by North Korea, Syria, Sadam Hussein’s Iraq, and other tremendous examples of technologically-advanced global powerhouses. In other words, when a Scud doesn’t blow up on the pad, meander off-course, or disintegrate in flight, it’s slow. And duct-taping a 1,200 lb. horse to it certainly isn’t going to make it any faster.
If Verizon was careful in their “There’s a map for that” ad to hit only AT&T and NOT the iPhone, it is clear that it’s no longer trying to avoid offending Apple.
It is obvious, Verizon gave up on the idea of ever having the iPhone and had decided that Droid will have to be the closest thing to the iPhone they’ll ever get.
Look out…it’s an income scud…
uh…
sorry, just an incoming nag with a firecracker up its tush.
Wow. Verizon really regrets turning down Steve, don’t they.
Karma’s a bitch.
Motorola is the clueless one. They once had major market share now they’re trying to convince us THEY have a clue? Not likely!
Verizon here in the South Bay of LA sucks!
Sad, sad, is this all you can do Verizon? Resort to name calling?
Nothing but commercial jealousy on Verizon’s part. Now they have to attack what they cannot have.
Taking on Apple in an advertising war is more than foolish, it reeks of disparate logic . Time will tell, especially when Sprint has the iPhone and Verizon is still tied to a Scud.
Morotola will be screwed Microsoft style when Google comes out with its own cell phone…. it’s deja vu all over again.
“If Verizon has decided that the best way to compete with iPhone is to weakly try and fail to emasculate it, then Verizon is clueless, desperate, and fearful.”
I don’t know that it is such a bad marketing ploy. It worked for SUVs in the 90’s. “Loose that sissy woman station wagon, and buy a MANS TRUCK, *to take the kids to soccer practice in…* ” It worked really well for GM and Ford for a number of years. Actually it might work very well. You would be very surprised at just how many terminally homophobic/chauvinist people there are in the US. Turn on Fox News and you will hear it preached to the choir. Homophobia is still very prominent in the US. If Verizon can connect the iPhone with femininity and or homosexuality, lots of people will drop it very quickly.
It’s pretty dirty marketing, but it’s not stupid at all.
Whenever I see the Droid’s red eye, All I can think of is a pocket sized H.A.L.
“It was a bug Dave.”
Got to be one of the dumbest commercials I have seen in a long time. Verizon didn’t, doesn’t, and won’t have a clue. They turned down the iPhone and lost my 5 accounts. They won’t ever get me back.
2010 is going to be a very fun year to see how this market develops and changes. I’m thinking June will be the best month.
What a stupid commercial without any substance or information.
Everybody will prefer the hot chick with iPhone over the messy blabber that comes after.
There are twistedly funny, quirky ads, that elict smiles while delivering a punch – and there are mean and desperate ads which inevitably backfire on the client, leaving a distaste for the product.
Apple has thrived on the former; Verizon is hanging itself with the latter approach. I’ll live with AT&T;rather than sign on to Verizon’s macho-desperation. Image DOES matter.
“Unless Verizon is looking to deliver highly-targeted Viagra and Enzyte ads, the only other thing we can think of is that maybe Verizon subconsciously wants Droid to fail, so they’ll be forced to finally wake up, forget about their craptastic V-Cast and dreams of other proprietary over-priced, under-featured services, and sign on Steve Jobs’ dotted line like they should have in the first place.”
Another example of why I keep coming here, multiple times per day. Bravo, MDN!!!
What the hell is that?? That ad lacks any class or real message. What the hell is its point? They have gone from the nerd in glasses with his team backing you up (at least those ads had a consistent message), to apparently trying to appeal to the Brazilian macho boys on South Beach. I really don’t get it!
The aggressiv marketing is not against Apple, Verizon just want to rescue this holiday saison. But finally they don´t really trust the droid phone to be the better device at the end of the day. Otherwise they won´t lift the return fees for phones from 180 to 350$ so something big is coming the next 12 months.
Gee, Dallasm… You’re not a Liberal, are you?
-HazMatt
Impressively bad ad.
The Dude abides.
Electronista continues, “It meanwhile thrives on the Droid’s powerful, masculine image and, among other things, suggests that the smartphone is ‘racehorse duct-taped to a Scud missile fast.'”
Uhm, that’s promoting a STYLE as well, just the stupid one, the one that drove the US auto industry into the ground. Yep, you know the one based upon the brawn of brands like Chevy. Of course we know how well that went.
If anyone sees their cell phone like that, I suggest therapy.
Not a bad spot, but only if you accept the confusing premise, that the phone is a robot.
How is a phone a robot? Because it’s fast? I just don’t get it, because they never really explain it.
Calling something a Droid doesn’t make it a robot.
I don’t want a robot phone. I want a computer phone with a big universe of applications. That’s what Apple sells.
OK. So am I the only guy who caught on to the circular say blade raised dangerously high, only to cut through a banana?
(Extra points for cringing at using the Hurst tool {aka Jaws of Life} for tearing into the middle of a pece of sheet metal?)
Sorry VZ, there’s macho, and then there is macho asshole. You are playing to the latter.
I laughed out loud several times. Mostly at how clueless and ridiculous the ad itself was.
Let’s see how Apple responds to Androids new aggressive, loud, and stupid ad campaign (hint: Apple will probably not be imitating its style.)
“I don’t know that it is such a bad marketing ploy. It worked for SUVs in the 90’s”
Comparing the Droid to an SUV is not a bad analogy. Overpriced, underpowered, an eyesore in action, poor handling, blinged up for the gullible….
Dissing Apple for _design_…?! That’s clueless.
Deus Ex Technica,
“I don’t want a robot phone. I want a computer phone with a big universe of applications. That’s what Apple sells.”
Bingo! Not sure the Verizon heads thought this one through after the marketing team brought the idea in.
The Dude abides.