Amp’d Mobile - Death & Humor
Thursday, December 1st, 2005
Brand: Amp’d Mobile
Execution: TV
Link:Click Here for a link to Ad Age for access to this ad.
Target: Young consumers looking for Cutting edge cell phones
Reviewer: Paul
Rating: *
Description:
The setting is a tacky motel room (ugly floral bed spread, cheap art on the walls) and a gray haired older man fully dressed in a suit and tie is laying dead on the bed. On top of him is young women wearing only a bra and panties. She is constantly pushing with both hands on his heart trying to resuscitate him. She is screaming at him…here is the entire text of the ad “Senator, Senator….oh no you don’t, you can’t go, you can’t leave, if you leave you’ll miss this new phone, it has an MP-3 player, 3-D video games and really cool graphics, come on, come on damn it!” Then the screen reads “Try not to die. Amp’d Mobile is coming.”
What Works:
Well the ad certainly gets your attention. You can’t help noticing this young women trying to revive her trick (I mean husband). But what have we really learned? All we know is that a phone is coming but we don’t see the phone, we don’t learn much about it (MP-3 players and video games are hardly new to phones) and we don’t even learn when it is coming?
Yes, I’m sure some young men will laugh at the set up…but will anyone buy the phone?
What Doesn’t Work:
Just about everything doesn’t work. The creatives took a memorable set up but didn’t do anything with our attention. The image will grab you but it fails to teach the target audience about the product or even show them the product so they know what to look for when they go phone shopping. Just because you remember a dead senator doesn’t mean you will remember the brand or make the connection that this is the phone for me and my lifestyle. With so many competing phones on the market why would someone feel compelled to buy this brand???
Clearly this new phone is targeting young people but will showing the scantily clad female really drive interest among young women? I doubt it. Young men are more likely to buy into the humor but will that lead to sales? Will the young men identify with the old senator or the young prostitute…I doubt it. Young men are into the technology and the features and they haven’t really learned anything that helps to differentiate the Amp’d phone. I wish the initial set up delivered some big product knowledge at the end. My only hope is that this is the first in a series and that maybe the senator and his friend are back at the phone store in the next commercial buying the phone and playing with the features.
Also what kind of tagline is “Try not to die…Amp’d mobile is coming” That is right up there with “Just Do It”
Branding Bottom Line:
It isn’t enough to create a clever set up, you have to deliver on the set up. I think the creative team fell in love with the image of a senator and a prostitute and couldn’t stop laughing. But this isn’t the type of ad that sells any product or even leaves the consumer wanting to learn more about the brand. No one is going to make a $200 buying decision based on this ad. Humor could work if it connected to the technology. What if the cutting edge technology caused the senator to die in shock? Or the senator used the cutting edge technology to get the girl in bed in the first place? Make the product the HERO not the AFTER THOUGHT.
