Saturday Night Live mocks Verizon 4G LTE marketing
NBC's Saturday Night Live (SNL) lampooned Verizon Wireless' confused, complicated, almost chaotic 4G LTE smartphone marketing last night. While Verizon has done a good, restrained job with their iPhone commercials to date, their non-Apple marketing has ranged from "Tell your wife it has a Tegra 2 processor" to tablet names that look more like 1980s Jean Claude van Damme movies, to a dizzying array of overlapping phones with very little in the way of clear segmentation or differentiation.
Right now, if my mom wanted a not-iPhone on Verizon, rolling dice and picking at random would likely be as effective a strategy as walking into the store. (Lucky for her, and for Verizon, there's Android Central)
Verizon would do well to draw up one of the Steve Jobs product grids, but instead of consumer and pro, portable and desktop, stick with consumer and prosumer, keyboard and no keyboard. Then build out slowly from there. A few great devices that get phenomenal, long term support would be far more memorable and marketable.
Source: PhoneArena via The Verge, Android Central
There are 27 comments. Add yours.
Funny,but kinda true-sadly.
Kinda true? This is 100% true!
I had 4G for 2 years, used it twice. It is a joke
As far as what? Speeds? Battery life?
Speeds and downloads are awesome. battery life takes a hit but when you can download something in a few seconds versus a minute or so on 3g it is definitely worth it.
Yea I've tested it on ATT's network and I loved it despite battery issues. I'm sure that those will be worked out soon enough like 3G was.
You haven't had lte for 2 years.......
Maybe he has Sprint, which means he had 4G for about 20 months...very close to 2yrs.
Putting network issues aside, at&t's marketing is much better than Verizon or most other carriers. I like the humorous angle they often use.
lmao! The last non iPhone smartphone I had was the htc fuze running windows mobile. I got my iPhone 3g and haven't looked back since. The flood of smartphones on the market now is incredibly confusing to me. None of them have been effectively marketed. I don't know how sales people can keep track of all the model names!
Verizon, and all other carriers, care only about selling big-minute plans. They don't care which phone is most popular, or whether their ad campaigns are crystal clear or not. The terms "LTE" and "4G" are used interchangeably or together for marketing purposes even though they're technically different generations of network protocol.
But confusion is good for the carriers. They don't want anybody to notice that real 4G will combine voice and data into a single IP packetized stream. When "LTE Advanced," the real 4G, is finally rolled out years from now, the carriers will all be hoping that their customers won't ask that embarrassing question: "Well, if voice and data are combined together now, why are you charging me separately for them?"
"The terms “LTE” and “4G” are used interchangeably or together for marketing purposes even though they’re technically different generations of network protocol."
100% wrong. HSPA+ and LTE were formally declared to be 4G back in December 2010.
As to your billing point, I'd say the fact that plenty of people pay extra for voice on the cable connection, sip trunks and the like shows how unlikely you are to be right on people questioning being charged twice
When it comes to 4GLTE phones on Verizon, other than "with or without a Keyboard", what is the difference? The Galaxy Nexus has ICS. The rest don't. If I didn't have an iPhone 4S on Sprint and was on Verizon, I'd want the Droid 4 primarily because it has a keyboard. Typing on a phone screen is annoying.
Kinda dumb really. I understand that some of Verizon's commercials are too "techie" talking about processors and what not (though other technology companies advertise just like that, such as Intel or HP, Dell, etc) - however, there are only so many ways you can market smartphones or a 4G network. Only so many ways to say "it's fast" and describe what you can do with that speed. Smartphones are little computers now, how else do you advertise a computer? Everyone knows a smartPHONE makes phone calls. The whole tidbit in SNL's skit implying that options is a bad thing is idiotic. You had the same problem with standard 3G smartphones when they were "the thing". When you talk to a rep, they don't talk like that. If anything, SNL should be ripping on AT&T for their faux advertisements in regards to their "4G" network prior to their pathetic 10 market LTE offering.
Verizon apologist much? How can you attack at&t for false advertising when the definition of 4G was expanded to include H+? At&t gets credit from me for actually having entertaining commercials. Your comment....so 27 seconds ago.
HILARIOUS!!!
I saw this last night and could NOT stop laughing.... This is the ultimate in how to NOT TO SELL SOMETHING...
Store reps honestly don't know how to explain LTE technology, which saddens me.. Oh and NBC misspelled Xyboard
Oh well, video now blocked by NBC Universal
Darn, if I had 4G LTE, I would have known that so 42 seconds ago. It is kinda dumb, how fast is fast, is getting silly.
This video has content from NBC Universal , who has blocked it on copy right grounds . EPIC FAIL.
YouTube
It's been blocked on YouTube also. Must have been very funny. Bummed I missed ithttp://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%2Fmobile&gl=US#/watch?v=dvL8WBrNHEk
Its still showing on Android Central
What happened to it???
here's the link again:http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/Verizon-Ad/1384573
Alternate YouTube URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yamqFxAXegk
Sounds quality is horrible.
So I have been using sprint 4g aka WiMAX for about 2 months and really it's not that fast. I see much better and more reliable speeds on AT&T 3G much more stable. I think AT&T gets a bad wrap but realistically in big cities like Seattle there so many users it's hard to get any decent speeds. Granted it does the jobs somedays better than others. Good for travel. Only reason I have this air card is work pay for it and I use it in a cradle point