That’s the only reason I noticed this press ad – as a punter, not as your reviewer on the trail of the good, the bad and the ugly. But as consumer or commentator, the ad is, as my daughter would say, "major fail".
Let’s start with the headline: "Mini but mighty." Eh? Any device that incorporates a web-browsing-friendly screen and a QWERTY keyboard has to be a certain size. It will never be as small as an "ordinary" mobile phone like my current model.
So what’s the point of this message about being a pocket-sized Android smartphone? I can’t imagine the XPERIA is significantly dinkier than an iPhone or a Blackberry. Are there other brands of Android smartphone that are too big for the average pocket? I remain puzzled.
What about the "mighty"-ness of the XPERIA? Apparently, you can email, Facebook and SMS; plus there are thousands of apps. Well, of course. Don’t all smartphones offer these features and more?
In short, what is special about XPERIA? Still no clue. And the visuals don’t help, either. For the background we have some random, yoofy types doing... er... something.
While the foreground features a moleskine book covered in the world’s most boring doodles. Because people really do like scribbling ‘SMS’ and ‘WWW’ in their idle moments... FFS!
As if to compound this horror show, someone seems to have forgotten the craft of press reproduction. The reason you can’t see the ad very well here is not down to the quality of my partner’s digital camera, but the ad’s real-life washed-out appearance in the Metro.
You want to like the brand and the product, but then the advertising does this. I’ll still be checking out fancy new handsets from Sony Ericsson. But now as a somewhat confused and disenchanted loyal customer.
