With a $100M advertising campaign, the Verizon Droid will be hard to avoid. However, I’m led to wonder… does marketing the antithesis (in this case, the iPhone) REALLY help you establish market leadership? In other words, can you really build a brand on whining, “Yea, me too… but better!”?
In a blanket push you won’t be able to escape, the integrated campaign is the largest in Verizon history with most of the money spent by the end of this year. (I can hear the Christmas cash registers now) The TV spots that have just started are as far from the iPhone’s happy, shiny ads as possible. Testosterone-heavy and graphically grim, according to Advertising Age’s Rita Chang, “they could be mistaken for Terminator ads.” And, the tagline? “In a world of doesn’t, Droid does.” (Am I the only one scratching my head, huh???)
Although Verizon dropped its earlier direct attacks on the iPhone, this new campaign pokes at the Apple culture itself saying, “swap semi-functional, giggling-brat-vanity for a bare knuckle bucket of does.” Time will tell, but Wendistry’s prediction is that, by attempting to brand a 2nd something by defining what the 1st something isn’t only reinforces the 1st something in the consumer’s mind. In a nutshell, iPhone killer? Hmmm… iPhone defender might be more like it.
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