Jay Cronley: Suggestive smartphone ad short on charm
BY JAY CRONLEY World Staff Columnist
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
10/30/12 at 4:52 AM
Some television commercials are more thought-provoking than what strains to pass for entertainment on the new fall schedule.
Super phones occupy a good portion of the national television advertising space. The technology has outpaced the need with some of the phones.
Here's a new commercial from the Samsung-Verizon smartphone hookup.
Innocent setup: This one is about the average American family: father, mother, couple of kids, happy times all around.
The father is getting ready to go on a trip, that well-worn saw with few sharp teeth left, the mother at the curb, bidding him good travel as he settles into the back of a cab.
Nothing sells beer like a good dog.
Nothing sells the hottest phones like a sense of family.
As this commercial rolls cheerily along with an apple pie in everybody's kitchen feel to it, it is revealed that the kiddies have prepared a video on the smartphone to remind Dad of all that he is working for, those sweet little happy faces grinning on the screen.
Who could get homesick with such sweetness close at hand?
Mom looks like she could be doing a number of pure Americana commercials on the side, anything from vacuums to computers to transportation: Come on kids, everybody in the van for soccer practice and then it's on to your homework and the nightly question-and-answer period over current affairs.
Mom is conservatively dressed.
She's every Mom: museum docent Mom, library volunteer Mom, good neighbor Mom.
Jaw dropper: Before she sends Dad off to parts unknown, All-American Mom becomes quieter, more discreet, looking around to speak privately with her man.
She leans in closer to the back seat and says softly that she, too, has prepared a little something for the trip.
Prim and proper Mom, who is almost as covered with clothing as an Amish woman, says that she, too, has made her fellow a video to take on his travels. A contemporary sitcom-type smile crosses her face, the kind the girl always gets when she sees her male roommate naked. Again.
She hands her guy in the back of the cab a phone and says softly of her private video that he probably shouldn't play it on the airplane.
The man seems as surprised as most viewers probably were at home.
And so there you have it, right there in broad daylight, sexual suggestions as a selling angle on a phone screen.
And so we move another step away from charm.
Original Print Headline: Suggestive phone ad lacks charm
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