I happen to be a big fan of teaser campaigns. I love the sense of mystery and anticipation and love to be the first in the know.
Droid, the new smartphone from Motorola and Verizon launched their new teaser campaign this weekend and it didn’t disappoint.
The first thing that stood out to me was the direct assault on Apple and the iPhone in this spot. It was a very clever commercial, using a mocking visual style of the “hip” apple spots. I liked the usage of “i” in every statement. This functioned in two different ways:
1. It made consumers aware of weaknesses of the iPhone (which people assume is perfect) and that their product would address those issues.
2. It was a great way to use Apples brand awareness against them by using their attention grabbing reputation to raise interest in the Droid spot.
People may have been thinking they were watching an Apple ad, but were quickly educated when the Droid information came up.
The marketers at Droid pulled out all the stops; they even included some hip peppy music in the background much like Apple does in all their spots. The spot also did a good job of turning a 180 when Droid came up and made sure that everyone understood this wasn’t an iPhone commercial.
It’s also important to note that the commercial didn’t say a lot about the product. It pointed out the flaws of the iPhone, and said that those same flaws would not be found in their new product.
A perfect teaser campaign.
The final line of copy in the spot was http://www.droiddoes.com – which is a site with basically no information. It shows the commercial again, has an email sign up and a counter which uses some fictitious characters; aka we don’t know exactly when it’s launching. The perfect accompaniment to the TV spot.
This teaser campaign had it all, kudos to those at Motorola and Verizon. Kudos for making the investment of running one; it will pay off.
In a world full of instant information, and a hyper segmentation of media (including bloggers like myself) a mysterious and aggressive teaser campaign can be an extremely effective tool for gaining awareness.
Honestly, do I really care about the next smart phone that isn’t an iPhone or Blackberry? No…
But am I now interested in this new product which straight up started a street brawl with Apple?
Hell yes.
As we know, Gen Y is the instant information generation. When this campaign started to run this weekend, you know huge numbers of curious Gen Yers filled Google with their Droid related queries. Now the phone is already in the consideration set of many, and consumers know almost nothing about it. Now that’s what I call marketing.
Now of course, a teaser campaign is nothing without a more information-driven sister campaign following it. It will be interesting to see what Droid comes out with closer to its launch (which by the way is rumored to be October 30th). If Droid is as good as it claims, will they be able to keep up this momentum and pose some a threat to giant Apple. Stay tuned as more updates come out.
I’m going to quote Steven Bellach who recently spoke to a Master’s branding class at San Diego State University:
“When positioning in a commodity category, focus on category benefits and own one – or speak the loudest”
Droid not only spoke the loudest, but yelled AT Apple… pretty gutsy.
What do you guys think of the campaign? Did it work for you?
Follow Todd on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/toddliss
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