Annuaire des voyageurs: Windows Phone 7 Ads Save Us From Our Phones [VIDEO]

lundi 11 octobre 2010

Windows Phone 7 Ads Save Us From Our Phones [VIDEO]

At this morning’s Windows Phone 7 launch, Microsoft didn’t just unveil new phones — it also unveiled its new ad campaign.

The company has uploaded two ad spots to its WindowsPhone YouTube account, titled “Really” (embedded above) and “Season of the Witch.”

Both ads serve to showcase the degree to which many of us are sucked into our smartphones and mobile devices. Though I’m loathe to admit it, a number of scenes from the ad, “Really,” could have been taken directly from my own life. Both ads employ the new tag line, “It’s time for a phone to save us from our phones.” It’s catchy, it’s timely and it’s true.

As others have noted, you see very little of Windows Phone 7, or any other specific phone, in the advertisements themselves. The Windows Phone branding is only introduced at the very end of the 60-second spots. That’s precisely the point.

Microsoft’s marketing angle for Windows Phone 7 is almost a complete 180 from its last mobile device, the ill-fated Microsoft Kin. With the Kin spots (no pun intended, I swear), Microsoft was all about trying to overly embrace just how connected and wired and sucked into our mobile devices we have all become. It was all about making the phone the center of your life.

With Windows Phone 7, the message is totally different. Rather than the phone being the center of your life, your life is the center of the phone. The phone is able to be there when it is needed, but it also lets you live your life and focus on actual connections in the meantime. The tone and the focus of the campaign is coming from a very different direction of Verizon’s ads for the Droid, the HTC ads or even from Apple’s vision of iUtopia.

As cellphone netiquette continues to evolve (or devolve, depending on your point of view), it’s refreshing to see a campaign that isn’t focused on keeping us sucked into the awesome and magic of the smartphone.

I firmly believe that the best strategy for Windows Phone 7 is for Microsoft to highlight what makes the phone different and unique. The ad campaign, done in collaboration with ad agency Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, is a solid start.