Verizon Sets Hype Bar High in New Droid Ad Campaign

In an aggressive ad campaign that blitzed the airwaves over the weekend, Verizon took aim squarely at the iPhone in promoting its upcoming release of the Droid. The “iDon’t” ad focuses on shortcomings of the iPhone, capping the message with the phrase “Everything iDon’t, Droid Does.”

In highlighting the iPhone’s limitations, Verizon reveals little about the Droid, other than the broad assurance that it will do what the iPhone does not. This “hype by implication” is an intriguing strategy, and it will be very interesting indeed to see if the Droid lives up to the expectations that Verizon is creating through its campaign.

For mobile porn producers like us at iPinkVisual, the good news is that regardless of whether Verizon succeeds in putting a dent in the iPhone’s reputation and market share, so long as consumers buy and use both devices to surf mobile porn sites, we benefit from the competition. Although the iPhone has been our focus since it first hit the market, our sites support Android-based phones, too, and we’ve been keeping a close eye on the development of new Android-based devices, anticipating that Android’s free, open-source nature will result in rapid development and adoption of the OS by multiple manufacturers.

So, will the Droid be an “iPhone killer?” Who knows — only time will tell. One thing you can count on, however, is that there will be a LOT of Star Wars references and bad “iWordplay” in the media coverage of this smart-phone-war in the making. No doubt, there will be pro-Apple bloggers proclaiming that “this isn’t the Droid you’re looking for,” and iPhone haters making endless use of iDon’t, iCan’t and iWon’t in their headlines.

If fantasy/sci-fi movie references become commonplace in mobile marketing, one wonders how long it will be before we see the launch of a “Highlander” handset, with an iPhone-like exclusive service provider relationship, and the slogan “There Can be Only One… Network.”