Sex, Lies and Red Christmas Tape? Verizon with more daring commercials, and AT&T still with the “There’s a Lawsuit for that…”

14. November 2009 by admin.

With Black Friday: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(shopping)) coming, in 2009 it falls on November 27th, there’s an urgency to get promotional advertising going to generate sales traffic. This can mean tradional bricks-and-mortar retailers, but more and more it means online retailers as well. So it would come as no surprise, since AT&T and Verizon have both bricks-n-mortar and online sales, that they would ramp up their advertising as well. Yes they are cellular carriers … a.k.a. cellular voice and data (an alias for Internet) providers - but they are retailers as well. And the eye candy products that they sell can be just as enticing as anything else when people are shopping for holiday gifts.

Anyway Verizon, seemingly undaunted by the litigation in progress, has rolled out more “There’s a Map for that” type of commercials. One puts the iPhone in the Land of Misfit Toys and when the other toys in Misfit Land ask why such a capable gadget would end up in MisFit Land - the iPhone toy pops up the AT&T Coverage Map again, still not showing any more coverage than the previous ones. Another shows an Assembly Line with Gifts Going out to Good Boys and Girls - Mostly Verizon Toys, but one Toy (cellular product) going to someone is an AT&T Toy … the coverage map pops up - a deep industrial sounding buzz alarm goes off - and the power gets cut to the assembly line - until someone says “Naughty” - so then the power gets restored and the Verizon Assembly Line starts running again. (”Nice” is said for all the Verizon Toys by the way.) There’s another one Blue Christmas. I’ll have to put the links to these three on here. I don’t want to embed them because I don’t want AT&T suing me or telling me that I have to remove them - if they win litigation against Verizon.

AT&T did give a response, on it’s web site, to all the Verizon Commercial stuff. You can form your own opinion on it:

http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=14002

Verizon Elves is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw9oNBrmv0g

Verizons Blue Christmas is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRIqIWxhTIQ

Verizon Misfit Toys is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JgrBtn8XdU

PC World has this story on it: http://www.pcworld.com/article/182154/lies_damned_lies_and_coverage_maps.html?tk=n_dnx_h_crawl

… and that is where I took my cues from on this blog post. As they are hinting at on PC World, and of course everyones opinion is their opinion, but - Both (maybe all?) Cellular Carriers Maps are often confusing and incomplete. If they could really give us some useful information - that is what they should do, and what they and we (the people) should use them for. Perhaps they should not be allowed in advertising at all?

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Alan Spicer Telecom / Alan Spicer Marine Telecom

http://www.marinetelecom.net

Google “Alan Spicer” … There’s a Google for That!

+1 954-683-3426 - communications (at) marinetelecom.net

Land and Marine WiFi and Cellular Products, Installation, and Computer - Networking Services

(and General Marine Electronics w/ Bryan Fugett - International Marine Electronics)

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