You know how it is when you wake up after having a barbecue at your place and you still feel drunk and your ears are ringing and you’re feeling pretty good — not too hung over, maybe an egg and sausage sandwich would get you back in sorts? And then you go out into the living room and something bad happened? Like your friend puked on the couch and then passed out in it or the dog ate a bunch of hot dogs and had explosive diarrhea all over the floor? Well, that’s how AT&T is feeling right about now with this whole iPhone thing. They’re basically asking “What the hell did we get ourselves into?”
Case in point: they’re new advertisements featuring “average Joes” talking about the iPhone like it was the RAZR 3. Whereas Apple’s marketing team tries to sell the device as a technology, AT&T is trying to aim for “people,” that slippery demographic of human beings who couldn’t give three farts about a phone made by what amounts to being a fourth-tier player in the mobile phone market. Meet Doug, Elliot, and Stephano, three regular guys who love to listen to voicemail, search for people in the Internet, and hate man purses, respectively. The ads include real things like “backdrops,” “extras,” and “dialogue” and include little of the stuff hipsters love about Apple commercials, namely catchy singles by unknown bands and close ups of fingers touching screens.
AT&T has every right to try to sell this phone. However, they should probably hurry up because they’ve got a good year and a half before the iPhone is a 2G memory and the 3G iPhone, available unlocked in every store in the land, turns Stephano into even more of a backwards Neanderthal than he already is.
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