Everyone knows Facebook is popular, and every marketer worth their name seems wanting to piggyback on it. And why not, there is nothing wrong with that! So you have Facebook Pages, Facebook Campaigns, Facebook Apps, Facebook Plugins and what not! But this one seems to have stretched things a bit further. A phone designed for Facebook!
"Vodafone Blue" may well be the next biggest innovation in mobile internet, which was waiting to happen, that no one thought about earlier. It could as well be the dud that thought that the Facebook plank was enough to attract some elusive customers. Though I have my views on the relevance of the product, I will hold them for now, as it goes beyond the realm of this blog. My views are restricted to the TV commercial, and how much it is in coherence with the stated marketing mix.
What is "Vodafone Blue"? It is an entry level Alcatel mobile phone with shortcut hardware keys specific to Facebook features (‘like’ key, for example), that comes packaged with a year-long unlimited 2G connection to Facebook, at a sub-Rs 5K price. It is targeted at yougsters in the non-metro (tier-2 & tier-3) cities.
Let us forget for a moment that I mentioned any of that, and now have a look at the Ad.
Not once during the initial 120 seconds (yes, 2 long minutes!) did it feel to be an Ad for anything other than Facebook itself. One could debate that the Ad attempts to show an enhanced Facebook experience that one could savour through hardware integration of Facebook features on a phone. But if this was the case, I think it’s a miserably failed attempt. Nowhere does the viewer get the message that there is some other additional device that is ‘enhancing’ the Facebook experience; it sounds like a listing of Facebook features and nothing more. Moreover, the initial 25-30 seconds are dedicated to Farmville, when the product does not even support social gaming!
Perhaps it would have helped to show the protagonist holding a handheld device, at least at the start, to hint at the source of the enhancement, but would that not have been tantamount to saying the phone supports all highlighted features, when it obviously doesn’t.
When the suspense is finally unraveled in the last 10 seconds of the Ad, “Love Facebook? We’ve got a Phone for you”, it leaves the viewer with a lot more questions than answers. Raising curiosity or giving germ to skepticism, you decide.
The theatrical broadway music and the fast moving act separate the Ad from the clutter, no doubt. And the ‘cool’ “join the club dad” image may have many youngsters aspiring to associate with it. However, the musical, which is the saving grace, becomes a bane if you consider the target segment. The act just seems too long, too theatrical and too English,and hence too alien and elitist for common youth from non-metros to associate with.
Verdict: Hummable Ad. But that is where it ends. Weak on message and weak on addressing the target segment.
On a lighter note, if Facebook were to buy out the rights for this Ad, it would make an excellent TVC with very minor modifications (like deleting the last 10 seconds).
P.S.: Only recently has Vodafone started to answer some of these questions - the price, the year-long 2G connection et al, in the shorter versions of this Ad.
