Before plumbing the depths of Nextel's ads featuring Dennis Franz (the guy from NYPD Blue), I'd like to point out what may already be obvious: people that design cell phones should quit watching old Star Trek reruns and get back to work. You see, the Nextel device is a Star Trek "communicator." That is to say, it's a satellite walkie-talkie. It even tweets at you when someone's contacting you, like the communicators on Star Trek used to do. That is to say, the Nextel device is a toy. (My sister was a big Star Trek geek when we were kids, and she even saved paper route money to send away for a genuine replica communicator like on the series. It tweeted when you opened the cover, but as far as I know she was never able to talk to Captain Kirk on it.)
Now, it's okay if you want to buy this toy. You can have a toy if you want to have a toy. There are far worse things people do for kicks than buy themselves communicators so they can play Star Trek when they're walking down the sidewalk or (as I see about four times a day now) heading to class. I can sort of see the appeal.
What I don't see is any practical use of these things. Nextel suggested one such in its first campaign for their walkie-talkie cell phones. The Very Important Suit is heading to a Very Important Meeting. But as one of his minions hands him the dossier he forgot to bring, he notices that the Very Important Suit has Very Noticeable Dandruff Flakes. Quick thinking leads the minion to buzz another minion further down the path to the conference room, who ingeniously pats the Very Important Suit on the shoulder and brushes off the flakes. Only again there's a problem: toilet paper stuck on the bottom of the Very Important Shoe. More quick thinking, another walkie-talkie goes "tweet," and the toilet paper is cleverly removed by the step-and-hold method. "Enterprise to Mr. Spock: XYZ."
Technological innovation is frequently driven by something other than the need to solve problems. Sometimes this leads to technology producing problems to solve.
In that case, the most important problem for the corporation producing the technology is to invent a need (read: a market). Nextel is trying to do just that, showing what they apparently presume to be reasonable purposes to which their Star Trek communicator can be put. Why they would attempt this with the allegedly sly "anti-advertising" approach of their current campaign is a mystery to me.
"Anti-advertising" is the term of art used to describe campaigns that appeal to viewers as savvy consumers who don't believe in advertising claims. That this forms the essential part of an "anti-" advertising claim suggests just how savvy they imagine viewers to be. It's a risky strategy, because it's difficult to strike the right ironic balance without tipping your hand and showing outright contempt for the audience. (Consider Miller's campaign from a few years ago, which I dubbed Ugly People Doing Stupid Things.)
In one ad in the series, Franz is making omelettes when he is called by an agent on his communicator, to offer him a "foot powder" ad. Franz puts down the bowl of eggs he's whisking, picks up the communicator, and declaims: "I don't do commercials." He sets the communicator down, picks up the bowl, sets the bowl down, picks up the communicator, and explains: "You know why I don't do commercials?" ("Tweet" goes the communicator.) "Why?" asks the agent. ("Tweet" goes the communicator.) "Because they're dishonest. They lie." ("Tweet" goes the communicator.) "That's harsh," says the agent. ("Tweet" goes the communicator.) Franz picks up the communicator again. "You want me to do an ad for a product I don't even use? Fuggedaboudit." (He says "fuggedaboudit" four times in the ad, because, you know, New York.) Franz puts down the communicator, picks up the bowl, and resumes cooking.
One thing is certain: commercials lie. What this one lies about is:
Arguably, it also lies
Perpetually present in this series of ads are Nextel logos in the background, which remind viewers that indeed this is a Nextel ad, and that indeed Franz is shilling for Nextel. The product doesn't appear very useful or convenient, and certainly no more useful or convenient than either a regular cell phone or that fast-disappearing artifact of telecommunications, the pay phone. So we're left with a set of contradictory messages: There's Franz cooking breakfast, interrupted by an apparently incompetent agent who is attempting to work out a commercial gig that Franz rejects during the commercial. There's Franz at an electronics store (AHA!), rudely interrupted by his agent trying to get him to hawk potato chips for 2 million bucks - and he doesn't even have to eat a chip! There's Franz at a fruit stand, holding a typically inane cell phone conversation about kumquats and tomatoes, trying to ignore and eventually berating someone who recognizes him from TV - behind him, (as I suppose we're meant to believe) by pure coincidence, the Nextel logo.
The fruit stand ad is particularly odd. Franz rebuffs the would-be fan who, in the narrative of the ad, recognizes him from TV - not from his role on NYPD Blue, but from commercials. "Hey pal," Franz gruffly asserts, "I don't do commercials." Yet of course, in fact, he does commercials, since he's in this one, for a product that seems to introduce pointless interruptions into his life.
What is the savvy consumer to conclude from all this?
("Tweet!") "Scotty, we've got to have warp speed immediately!"
("Tweet!") "She canna hold out much longer, captain! Fuggedaboudit!"