Divide and conquer

Communications is a tough business. Being good means being better than those who have come before us and goodness knows that we’ve had some great communications over the past century or so.

I came across an ad that I believe deserves praise. This is not an endorsement of the product or the company; it is an endorsement of the creative talent.

First watch the ad, then read on.

http://youtu.be/Z19vR1GldRI

So, here’s the deal. What I love about this ad is the reference to an obvious collision of titans thereby validating the value of the forgotten one. Microsoft is in a delicate position, they know this. As regards mobile telephony, they, the legacy titan, have been left behind by the two current giants Apple and Samsung. But that’s not the genius. The genius is to have picked on the Apple – Samsung fight to position themselves as the natural choice. Admittedly, I might have gone for a different punch line. I would have opted for a ‘carved space’ message that showed that Microsoft’s strength in this segment is its clear uniqueness. Let us not forget that, you may clearly disagree, Samsung’s UX was inspired by iOS making them rather similar in many respects. Microsoft’s UX is, whether you espouse it or not, unique.

In short, in a world of tough breaks, it’s nice to see that an advertiser managed to pick on a situation rather than a defect to assault their competitors, not to mention that they really did get two birds with one stone!