Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
This week Charlie Sheen showed the American people why the French think we are idiots, as he got to a million followers on Twitter in record-breaking time, officially confirmed by the Guinness Book of World Records. Now I am more of a Bud Light gal myself, but it’s safe to say social networking is changing everything. Everything. (Except for the formula for Bud Light. That is sacred.)
Why is Charlie Sheen tweeting? There are a million answers to that, but I am not going there. (OK, just one: because he thinks he’s a ma-Sheen?) His actual answer was simple: there are advertising dollars involved. And who doesn’t like a few advertising dollars? Speaking of which, I finally started tweeting. You can follow me at TracyAFord1.
Which brings me, for lack of a smooth segue, to advertising in the wireless industry.
The clear winner today: Best Buy, which manages to slam all of the products it carries – cell phones, tablets, TVs – in a single ad and appeal to the American public as well with its future-proof program, which reminds consumers no matter how cool the device they just bought is, it’s outdated tomorrow.
(Just so you know: Best Buy does not think this applies to TVs priced at $5,000 or more because they are excluded from the program. There’s always a catch, isn’t there? However, if anyone wants to go ahead and buy said $5,000 TV and then get the new version when it comes out, there is also the Tracy Ford buy-back program, where I will take that outdated piece of junk off your hands and give you $500 U.S. , and all of the Euros and Hong Kong dollars laying in my jewelry box because I never know what to do with them when I return from a trip.)
But back to advertising: I have spent a bit too much time in front of the TV this week watching American Idol, so I was wondering now that Verizon Wireless has the iPhone, what will AT&T Mobility advertise on American Idol as part of its promotional package (AT&T customers can text their votes to American Idol, but no one else can. Then again, Ryan Seacrest gloated that for the first time, this year people can also cast their votes online. To which I can only say, those American Idol people are way ahead of the technology curve.
But back to advertising: It seems AT&T has found a new best buddy: Motorola. To which I have to say: You rock Moto. And can we all just assume from now on that when we are referring to Motorola, the company that makes cell phones, we call it Motorola X, and when we refer to the other Motorola, we call that company Motorola Y because their full names are too long to remember? (Alright, I know them: Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. and Motorola Solutions Inc. See, long, with lots of extra letters to type.)
My colleague Matt Kapko and I were having a brilliant discussion about this earlier this week and we think the French have it right: You can’t find an Inc. or a Corp. or a GmbH or a plc or anything but Alcatel-Lucent on Alcatel-Lucent’s website. (Has anyone checked to see if this company actually incorporated?) Now if anyone tries to be nice and wants to send me a note pointing out that Alcatel-Lucent is really Acatel-Lucent CorpIncGmbHplc, please don’t. I don’t want to know.
But back to advertising: Consumer Reports doesn’t take any advertising, you know, because it keeps them honest. And earlier this week Consumer Reports said the iPhone 4 at Verizon Wireless also has antenna issues (which, if you ask me, are better issues to have than Charlie Sheen issues). Consumer Reports even went so far as to tell us that its special tests “were all carried out in the controlled environment of CU’s radio-frequency isolation chamber.” (You know who could use an isolation chamber?)
But then later in the week, J.D. Power and Associates said that Verizon Wireless had the best network quality of all the nationwide carriers. You know what this means, people? The iPhone actually has a flaw. You can’t blame AT&T any more.
But it doesn’t matter because He Who Must Not Be Named (in this column anyway) appeared onstage earlier this week to announce the iPad 2. And we all fawned – because it’s thinner – and it comes in black – and it comes in white. And we are a nation of iDol worshippers.
Ok Enough of that.
— Conan O’Brien payed tribute to Finland this week with Angry Birds and Nokia ringtone tribute.
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I welcome your comments. Email me at tford@rcrwireless.com
