Emotion Tugging
When I watched the new iPhone 4 commercial at Apple’s iPhone 4 unveiling, I knew that Apple had a new hit commercial on their hands. Now Apple has unveiled four more commercials touting the iPhone 4′s FaceTime feature.
I saw one journalist write about these new ads, and the fact that his (almost) Luddite friend wanted an iPhone 4 because of the FaceTime commercial. (Sorry I forget where I saw this.) It’s all about the emotion. Who can help feeling a throat lump when a father convinces his daughter to smile in spite of her new braces? Or to feel a pang of sympathy when a far-away soldier beholds his unborn child on a monitor? This is powerful stuff.
Never mind the fact that this is a feature that many of us will use once or twice for the novelty, and then ignore. The only people I know with iPhones are people that I mostly correspond with via IM and email anyway. I rarely talk to them on the phone. Now if my parents got an iPhone, that would be great. I could get my children to video chat with them, and it would be great. But I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
FaceTime will draw people to the iPhone 4, but I think it’s the Retina display that’ll keep them coming back for more.
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