That’s where the features of the Pomegranate Phone start to draw skepticism from people. But the features that follow leave no doubt that this is a gag-ad. The ad showcases the phone as a personal shaver and mobile personal coffee brewer.

Thus begins Nova Scotia’s latest, slickest, and most expensive endeavour into using new media and social networking to pass the message of the ‘Come To Life‘ campaign to their unsuspecting target market. The viral campaign peddles this ‘it does everything’ phone with all the might that a $300K advertising budget can provide. Yet it seems that the jury is still out on the effectiveness of this campaign.

Visit the website by clicking the image below. Or see the videos below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq2A6bi_sDE

The campaign was produced by Bristol Group, Egg Films/Hatch, and Breathe Media.

• Art Director: Dan Couto
• Copy writer/creative director: Albert Ianni
• Production Manager: Collette Snow
• Designers: Andrew Grantham, Michael Gatto
• Internal Programmer: Melissa Castle
• External programmers/designers: Breathe Media
• Production/Post: Egg Films/Hatch Post
• Actors/Models: Christopher Killam, Lita Lewellen, John Beale, Laura Bleasdale, Andrea Wilson, Pasha, ?Others?

Synopsis:

The impossible-made-possible features of this phone are not so far fetched. In early 2007, I reviewed a new product by an Israel-based technology company that produced a pocket projector device not unlike the built-in fantasy projector showcased for the Pom. The Explay Nano Projector is effectively the world’s smallest consumer projector and was planned to launch to market in 2008. The company was working on providing the technology as OEM for cell phone and camera manufacturers to incorporate into future devices. Click picture below to visit their website.

Similarly, the voice translation function currently exists, though the technology is not fit for seamless speech recognition yet (only phrase by phrase). Devices combining voice recognition and translation software are a dime a dozen. A simple speech-to-speech voice recognition translator can be bought from Ectaco for a little under $400 CDN. The software itself is available for installation on smart phones.

Last but not least, a hybrid musical instrument phone was recently launched by Japan’s Kddi in collaboration with Yamaha. See my review of this technology here. It can be played as a harmonica, trumpet, flute, and various other instruments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-76oq_AHHg

The campaign can be said to have three components:

• The medium
• The message
• The actual product it peddles.

The Medium:

A great viral campaign by Bristol, Hatch, and Breathe. World class, really. It achieves the desired effect of getting people to pass around the url to give their friends and colleagues a quick chuckle. The campaign was implemented in Boston, Toronto, Calgary, and Ottawa. On Tuesday of last week, 200 pomegranates (the fruit, not the phone) containing the url (pomegranatephone.com) were passed around to people by street teams in Boston, Ottawa, and Toronto during their morning commute.

Yet, there appears to be a disconnect from the Pom site and the site containing the client’s message. It’s as if two different companies were hired, one for the flashy viral campaign, and another for the Come To Life mini-site.

The Message:

Here is where it gets tricky. Critics of this campaign point to how the message is hard to locate in this viral. Even when you do get to the mini-site containing the video clips that are meant to pitch Nova Scotia to the target market, there appears to be a disconnect between the demographic target of the videos and the demographic target of the Pom’s viral.

The Pom’s viral appeals to a tech-savvy younger demographic that spends a lot of time on the internet and enjoys passing around virals. Other demographics that spend a lot of time on the internet and pass around junk mail and viral videos are employees, stay at home parents, and teenagers without much to do.

Yet, Bristol notes that the key demographic they are after is “influencers and business leaders in key markets”, a group that usually stays on top of trends and the latest in technology.

Bristol is correct in that influencers and business leaders stay on top of technology and trends. However, perhaps a fatal flaw here is that the Pom phone is neither a new technology nor a trend, so it would be of little interest to business leaders to visit the site or forward to their contacts. It is just a gag site, and we have already established who is attracted to gag sites. Leaders and influencers are too busy leading and influencing to spend time checking out gag sites.

So, ultimately, the main visitors that ended up on the site were teenagers from around the world, and expat young professionals who out-migrated from Nova Scotia seeking opportunities in other Canadian or international cities. They clicked, they chuckled, some sent it to their friends.

Some followed the viral into the Nova Scotia Come To Life message, and were disappointed. The video testimonials mainly showcase entrepreneurs, doctors, and enterprises. No representative age group was showcased doing the things these expats fled the province to do elsewhere. This brings us to the third and final component of this campaign.

The product:

Regardless of how flashy the packaging is, the sale ultimately relies on the product itself. Does the product deliver as advertised? Is it reliable? Ultimately, the expat demographic left Nova Scotia for a reason. They are aware of the challenges, and are in touch with the motherland enough to know if these challenges have been overcome by the province/city or not.

So, you want people to ‘Come To Life’ in Nova Scotia? Many believe all Nova Scotia has to do is actually provide the product they are peddling, not just market a false image with pretty packaging and slick marketing. What if HRM City Council actually spent time implementing this fantastic 5-year Economic Strategy they came up with in 2005?

I will leave you with this MSN conversation between me and one such expat that might shed light on what I mean (look! He is using technology too!)

Jeff Lohnes graduated from Saint Mary’s University with an excellent record in student leadership and community involvement. Shortly after, he left for Toronto, where he currently works for the National Speakers Bureau as a Youth Market specialist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-76oq_AHHg

This phone comes with a variety of attachments to allow the owner to switch between flutes, harmonicas, trumpets, etc.

Kilian-Nakamura.com notes additional musician/DJ mobile phone instruments that were unveiled at the exhibit, including a folding DJ scratch pad and synthesizer, a string-instrument cell phone, air-drum sticks, and keyboard instrument.

Mobile phone innovation is no big thing in Japan. Fierce competition by the three main mobile service providers (Docomo, KDDI, and Softbank) in the trend-loving Japanese market had already produced technologies years ahead of anything we have in North America or Europe (let alone Canada’s dinosaur rate of adoption of new mobile technologies). Japanese consumers today use their mobile phone as an all-in-one lifestyle device. Phones are used as mini-TVs, email/internet devices, credit cards, RFID swipe cards, and for virtual gaming to name a few.

The early July launch of the iPhone in Japan (same day as its launch in Canada) was preceded by speculations of poor uptake in a market where the ‘wow’ factor of the iPhone is eclipsed by existing technologies. (A previous blog post about the iPhone’s in Japan can be found here). However, early stats seem to show that the exclusive provider (Softbank) is raking in subscriptions that may have boosted their market ranking from number three (behind KDDI) to number two for the month of July.

However, skeptics still believe that the uptake is only a small percentage of the market, most likely comprised of “gaijin” (foreigners/outsiders) and Apple enthusiasts. They predict that the growth is unsustainable and will not crossover into mainstream Japanese consumers due to the lack of gadgetry in the iPhone (e.g. to use the phone as a charge card or watch Japanese digital television during daily commute).

It is almost depressing to talk about cell phone technologies while I sit in Canada, unable to blog through my mobile phone due to crippling data usage rates that restrict non-corporate consumers from shedding the tethers of connectivity and relying on the chains of home/office networks to communicate and innovate.

Japan’s oligopoly resulted in constant competition to provide consumers with better cheaper mobile technologies, while Canada’s big three (Rogers, Bell Aliant, and Telus) appear to have a silent price-fixing agreement. High cell phone and data rates in Canada are preventing entire industries from taking off due to low uptake of cellphone internet usage. Mobile internet commerce, application, and game development for the cell phone industry in Canada is near obsolete.

When was the last time you saw a job posting seeking “mobile application developers” in Canada?

Notice the attention to detail. The models were chosen to reflect the cultural diversity of the UAE and, ofcourse, the ever present crane in the skyline (it is estimated that 15 to 25 percent of the world’s cranes are currently operating in Dubai, the world’s fastest growing city).

As the Nova Scotia government considers banning cell phone use and smoking while driving with children, should SMSing receive individual attention or should any upcoming creative address the general use of cell phones while driving without going into specifics?

Agency: Gulf Promoaction DDB Dubai
Creative Director & Copywriter: Rishad Lawyer
Art Director: Laith Hafez

Seen on Ad Blog Arabia.