I actually have an iPhone. I got a smartphone for my business so I can take credit cards at public events. I wanted the easiest phone to use, and an easy-on-the-eyes background.
Then I discovered you can make phone calls with the iPhone, and if you’re lost and know the tool is there, you can even find yourself on the phone, and possibly get un-lost, if that’s even a condition. I even downloaded a song to play in a workshop I teach.
The iPhone is brilliant. I now understand why people like technology.
So why is the phone’s new TV campaign so poorly done?
So far I’ve seen two commercials. Each star a person—and their phone. In each, the person, one a woman, the other a man, seem engaging, dynamic, successful, and interested.
But they are having a relationship with their phone. They not only like it: they smugly relish it.
Did you notice that there are no other humans in these commercials? One lone human and their talking phone? Doesn’t that just creep you out?
Here’s a better idea: have a commercial in which different people talk to each other about something, sending directions, restaurant ideas, sight-seeing, whatever, but doing it together, all made easier by technology.
But let’s not have technology replace human interaction.
Oh, wait, we already did that. Let’s take it back. Stat.
(c) 2012 Robyn M Fritz
