iPhone ads

Although I don’t have an iPhone, the television commercials that played non-stop leading up to its release certainly “made” the message for me. The simplicity of the ad is rare in comparison to other cell phone ads that are indistinguishable from one another. The ads feature a hand holding the phone and using some of its many features (phone, internet, ipod, e-mail viewer, the rotating screen, camera, touch sensitive screen). The uniqueness of the commercials represents the uniqueness of the product and its capabilities. I seriously considered buying an iPhone and did a lot of research to find out how the actual product lives up to the coolness of the phone in theory. Every time I read a person’s negative experience with AT&T’s wireless coverage and the fact that the iPhone as a phone is less than extraordinary (and in fact does even get service in some locations http://www.slate.com/id/2169620/pagenum/2), the digital, print and television ads reeled me back in. I would forget that the iPhone lacks a lot of simple features that other cell phones have—voice dialing, video capture, sending picture messages to other cell phones, etc. For me, the visuals in the commercials have stayed with me far longer than the text in the articles I’ve read and I think that’s partly due to the revolutionary nature of the product itself, but can also be attributed to the way the ads present the phone and its capabilities.