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Motorola's Super Bowl Ad was clever but also very hypocritical. The concept played off of Apple's 1984 famous Super Bowl Ad. However in Motorola's version Apple is "Big Brother" with its dominating iPad and Motorola is the freedom seeking, independent thinking innovator through use of its forthcoming Motorola Xoom tablet. While clever on an emotional level, the attempt shows hypocrisy and fails for these three reasons:

1. It takes almost 30 seconds to realize that the tablet being used by the man not wearing the white hoodie and headphones isn't a iPad. It's the same size and same color as an iPad, yet there are no markings to tell you that it is NOT an iPad. If you want to "break free" as a hardware maker, wouldn't you make your hardware noticeably different to distinguish it from the competition? Apparently the hardware designers at Motorola failed to be very innovative and instead copied design ideas — form-factor, materials and color — from "Big Brother".
2. Since the hardware doesn't look much different than Apple's iPad, maybe the software is. Well wrong again. The software the Motorola Xoom will use is Android 3.0. Hmmm. How original will that be? Not very, because Samsung, HP, Dell and several others will also use Android to power their tablets. So who really is the drone/copy-cat and who is innovative on the software side? Seems like Apple still is the "break free" innovator.
3. Finally the Motorola Xoom will use Android 3.0. But Android 3.0 is vaporware right now and no official release date has been given. Just like George Orwell's 1984 was a story, so is the Super Bowl ad by Motorola — just a story. It's clever, but it isn't real. Okay, it's a "pre-announcement" of a product that doesn't exist (for purchase) that runs an operating system that hasn't been announced and without any idea how much it will cost.

A clever ad, but upon analysis fails miserably.

2 Comments

1. ViewRoyal ~ February 8, 2011 19:46
   I totally agree with points 1 & 2, but point 3 is not really true. Google had a media event last week at which it demo'd the final release version of Android 3.0 Honeycomb running on a production Xoom. We also know that the Xoom goes on sale next week (at a ridiculous price of $799). With this in mind, you really can't call Android 3.0 Honeycomb and/or the Motorola Xoom "vaporware".
2. instig8r ~ February 8, 2011 21:03
   We now know the cost of mistaking the Xoom for something useful: $800!!!

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