New iPhone ads for the Audi driver and social network addict
Imagine you’re out buying an Audi A4. Such is the premise of one of Apple’s two new iPhone commercials, available on their website as of this morning. One, Cars, focuses again on the iPhone’s capability for bringing the entire Internet to your iPhone so you make sure you always get the best deal. Admittedly, it does a nice job of showing off the iPhone’s web-browsing interface, including the interface for using drop-down menus, but really, this is ground we’ve trod before.
The second ad, Facebook, deals with using your phone to surf MySpace. Okay, fine, to surf Facebook. Steve Jobs showed off the Facebook web app last year at WWDC as an example of a great app built with the “SDK” available at the time. Nothing new exactly, but those kids today—they sure love the Facebook.
So, great. Surfing Facebook and car shopping. Two things I personally never, or at best rarely do. Then again, I’ve already got an iPhone, so I guess I’m hardly the target demographic. Interesting, however, that Apple has apparently shifted back to the “How To” style ads from the personal testimonials we’d seen more recently. Maybe they were tired of taking flack for that pilot ad.
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Comments (3)
I just used my iPhone on a car buying excursion a couple weeks ago. It's very handy, though using KBB on EDGE is not a viable option. There's some mobile/iPhone optimized pricing tools at cars.com. Those were the best I could find.
Posted by Ryan Williams | February 6, 2008 12:22 PM
I want the iPhone/Apple marketing people (and if you have friends over there, please send this to a quality marketing person) to know what we really use an iPhone for:
--Making travel plans while sitting in a crowded waiting room
(Example: sitting in an airport on the West Coast while trying to make Amtrak train reservations for the East Coast, with a terrible Amtrak website)
--showing materials to potential clients
(Example: using my custom-made video and photo files -widescreen- to really impress. I converted PDFs to "pictures" to have a whole design portfolio in the iPhone, and converted online video to mv4 format for iPhone viewing)
--finding directions (Thanks, Google Maps) to businesses or friends in the Contacts
--checking weather in cities I am traveling to, or what clients are experiencing in their areas
--staying updated on my NPR podcasts, which assist my work - when I can't stay tuned to a radio!
--the easy-to-read notes in my Calendar or Contacts, which can be skimmed with a flick on my finger - important while working or referencing on-the-go
--threaded SMS, which I'd had on my Treo, but which others with regular cell phones don't have
And more, of course.
I know all this Audi and Facebook stuff is "cool", but people with real lives might be using the iPhone in "real" ways. Not all of us spend lives on Facebook, or Twitter, or buy Audis. It actually might be an important purchase to spend $400 on a cell phone - that we intend to WORK with it, in ways which works for us.
Lauren Muney
www.physicalmind.com
www.snakeoilproductions.com
Posted by Lauren | February 6, 2008 12:26 PM
Dan, why are you bashing the Facebook app?!? It's awesome, and I use it everyday... just because you don't use it doesn't mean that it's not extremely useful to "those kids today". Also, Facebook's user interface is a million times better than the horribly cluttered MySpace.
Posted by iphoneuser39 | February 7, 2008 9:52 PM