Nokia Resorts to FUD Ads

What does it mean when an advertiser begins his campaign by knocking the other product about issues over two-years old? I thought making the consumer think about the market leader (not your product) was a bad thing. This week Nokia, following phone-partner Microsoft’s lead, dropped a series of FUD ads¹ purporting to be secret behind-the-scenes footage highlighting decisions made at an unnamed company (Apple) proving that this unnamed company (Apple) knew that they were selling defective products. Really? I guess this would work if I just flat out hated all things Apple, because it would reinforce my distrust of them. But then because I’m not told anything about their alternative, I’m just as likely to let myself get talked into buying a Samsung Fablet (aka, the Note). Especially after the “Smoked by Windows Phone” flap (see below). Oops. Fail.

Also in the category of ideas that seemed perfect on paper but failed to deliver, Microsoft ran into a few complications when its “Smoked by Windows Phone” challenge didn’t turn out as planned. According to Sahas Katta he pitted his Samsung Galaxy Nexus against Windows’ latest and greatest and beat their randomly selected challenge to go from the phone being off to pulling the weather from two cities. But the Windows people declare Katta a loser because Katta’s phone used a widget and didn’t have to go to a website to pull up the info. When further pressed, the Windwos people said that they won “just because.” Adding insult to injury the Windows people insisted that Katta have his video taken before he left the store and insisted that he read the line, “My android phone was smoked by windows phone.” Not. Maybe Nokia shouldn’t be following Microsoft’s lead. You think?

2024-06-19. As you can see, none of the links to the ad campaign work. FAIL. So here’s one that I was able to find, but I have no way of knowing if it was part of the original campaign. It is pretty funny… too bad Microsoft kills Windows find since then… [not really].