“Motorola today sent out a segment of its teased Super Bowl ad that revealed its strongly anti-Apple rhetoric,” Electronista reports.
“The 15-second snippet portrays iPhone and iPad users as Orwellian proletarians, all wearing the same white hoodies and white earbuds,” Electronista reports. “The lone Motorola Xoom owner, appropriately reading 1984, is comparatively colorful and uses his tablet to help him find a flower shop.”
MacDailyNews Take: When doing a half-assed knockoff of an iconic Apple product, why not do the same to their famous Super Bowl ad, too?
Electronista notes, “The ad also carries a degree of irony as it encourages users to switch to a platform with as much market share in the smartphone world and controlled by Google, whose goal is to track users’ behavior.”
Read more in the full article here.
The leaked portion of the ad:
MacDailyNews Take: Motorola’s trade dress infringement is so severe, most Super Bowl partiers will think this is an iPad ad, if they notice it at all. For the teetotalers, this ad is tractionless pap that, so far, impresses the following message upon the viewer: “Get a Xoom to go with your Zune, Kin boy, you connoisseur of orphaned, dead-end tech, you.”
Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha: iDon’t have an original idea in my head, and neither does our ad agency.
“Tractionless Pap!!!”
@ MDN Take: Your verbal attack is offensive. I will not stand for your pap smear!
Nothing wrong with trying to flip the script, but it has to be clever and done well. This is neither.
I thought it was an iPad he was using at first, too.
I just. Dumped a Moto phone for an iPhone4 on Verzion.
Shipped last!!!
It certainly looked like an iPad. Free advertising !
This ad spoofs itself, but I’d love to see Ellen Feiss as “the girl” doing her “what the?” face as Buck-the-Crowd-Boy offers her the flowers. Perhaps she’d accept them in sympathy.
You can’t make a derivative product more popular by portraying it as “hip” in an expensive ad. Consumers are stupid, but they’re not that stupid. They’re only willing to go off the beaten path if the other product is either noticeably better or cheaper. The Xoom ain’t noticeably better. And cheaper products aren’t “hip”.
Bottom line, this kind of commercial is always a waste of money. I think the only reason ads like this get approved is because they appeal to the egos of the men making the decision.
——RM
So Is it an Android tablet – or a Honeycomb tablet – I guess you can use it in your Honeycomb hideout….I would hide too if I had one of those.
Looks pretty thick, with cheap plastic back. My two cents. I do like the 3d google maps and the promise of upgrading to 4g (Although I have no idea what the means) it just sounds good.
Playing catch up is so hard to do. Sucks for them.
15secs? Where’s the rest of it?
Looks like the guy without the rain coat will be the stupid one caught in the storm. Should have gotten an iPad so he could check the weather before heading out.
What am I missing? And why release a snippet if you want to have real impact? Gad, it is almost pathetically comical how these followers can’t even copy something properly.
Uh, what gets my attention is the chick by the subway door at the end of the ‘teaser.’
FAIL! People are smart enough to know that Moto is just desperate for attention with this ad.
Apple ads show you what their stuff can do. Moto just shows desperation.
Good marketing leverages what’s already in people’s heads.
This approach will fail because Apple has been the “different” company for so long, it’s impossible to change people’s perception.
Apple by definition is the outsider.
Microsoft, Dell and thousands of tech journalists insisted on it for so long (and Apple happily adopted the brand-positioning).
Only a few disgruntled PC and Android geeks think Apple isBig Brother”. The rest of the world thinks these few people are nuts.
It’s not the whole commercial so we don’t know exactly what the sell will be, but it appears what they are going for is to say being different is the primary benefit. If so, it’s a weak message in the face of a hugely functional iPad, which is sold for its demonstrable user benefits.
First copy Apple’s iPad. Check.
Second copy Apple’s advertising concept from 25 yrs ago. Check.
Does anyone in tech actually think original thoughts anymore?
Hey Kettle! I’m a pot! You’re black!
wtf is that? A celebration of bad taste, thats what is it.
We’re an apple happy household – but the fact remains – that ad is probably true. Apple fanboy culture is so fanatically blind – their conformism has come full-circle. The ad looks good.
Most iPad / iPhone consumers have no idea what commercial this plays on, hence totally ineffective.
Like saying, everybody buys iPads and iPhones, you should be the only one doing soothing different. Why?
How do you pronounce that? Xoom? Exhume? Dig up the dead?
“Ugh. Apple’s pounding us. How do we fight back?”
“I know! We’ll insult iOS users, that’ll make them run out and buy Xooms!”
“Brilliant idea! We’ll go with it!”
“But I was being sarcas–“
“I’m giving you a raise! Wait, what was that you were starting to say, my boy?”
“Err, nothing, sir. Nothing.”
What are these guys thinking? Im a mac person for 25 years. As well as a Motorola person. They don’t just sell phones and ipads. Insulting Mac people is not the way to keep customers buying their products. Insulting Mac owners is not the answer! Again, what are these guys thinking?????
Moto should have done a bit of research into past commercials, and learned that the last time someone released a Super Bowl commercial calling customers of other companies “drones”, “sheep”, or “lemmings” got their asses handed to them. I’m talking about Apple and their anti-IBM commercial “Lemmings.”
Dumbasses…