A little while ago I heaped some dirt on Samsung’s newest “Next Big Thing” commercials. I stand by what I said: it’s taking on a foe the wrong way with a product that could look so much better if presented properly. Nokia has now jumped on the Apple-bashing bandwagon with ads for the new Lumia 920. Same problem here, but at least Nokia’s ads are pretty.
The ad shows hundreds of dreary, monochromatic people queuing up for the latest piece of gadgetry: a black rectangle that bears the number “5”. Sound familiar?
When our protagonist gets to the front of the line, he asks for a 5 with colour, and the room goes nuts. Alarms sound, lights drop from the ceiling, people look like the man has just kicked a monochrome baby.
But all of a sudden, other colourful people walk by, looking as cosmopolitan as ever.
Apple bashing is the easy way out. All you have to do is pick a fault — a growing list with the iPhone 5 — and go nuts. Nokia has gone with the personality your phone represents when you buy it. That is: everyone who buys an iPhone is the same, but Lumia owners are different. A good strategy, but why do we need to mention the fruit stand at all?
There are so many great features Nokia could have gone with in its ads without even alluding to the iPhone: awesome optical image stabilisation (not faked), bonkers new features in Windows Phone 8 or just the great-looking design on its own in a vacuum.
There are enough iPhones in the world now that everyone knows what it is, what it looks like and what it does wrong. In advertising, surely you don’t need to go and spell that out to a customer? Surely you can just present your sexy, awesome-looking new gadget with a witty tag line and have people fishing into their pockets to compare?
Will we ever see an end to iPhone bashing? [WP Central]