[Originally posted Dec. 4, 2009 on Fortune.com]
Someone had fun writing this ad copy:
Droid. Should a phone be pretty? Should it be a tiara-wearing digitally clueless beauty pageant queen? Or should it be fast? Racehorse duct-taped to a Scud missile fast. We say the latter. So we built the phone that does. Does rip through the Web like a circular saw through a ripe banana. Is it a precious porcelain figurine of a phone? In truth? No. It's not a princess. It's a robot. A phone that trades hair-do for can-do.The new Droid commercial that debuted in prime-time Thursday night (and is pasted below the fold) opened a new front in Motorola (MOT) and Verizon's (VZ) $100 million ad campaign to take market share from Apple's (AAPL) iPhone.
Earlier commercials had appealed to the fragile male ego with icons of masculinity: stealth bombers, heavyweight fighters, rock-crushing machinery.
This one goes after the competition by painting it -- and its users -- as effeminate.
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It remains to be seen whether it has burned its bridges to the other half of the market in the process.
Below: The latest ad.
[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]
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