Best Buy made the news last week for suspending and likely firing a young employee who made an online cartoon mocking iPhone buyers – even though the video made no mention at all of Best Buy. Apparently the company doesn’t mind cruel humor if it’s the one dishing it out, or if the target is poor people instead of Apple, or something.
Now Best Buy has launched a new ad campaign designed by shock-dork-marketers Crispin, Porter + Bogusky (Subservient Chicken) called “Phone Shame Eliminator.” The campaign tells people too poor or otherwise disinclined to have smart phones that they are sexually unattractive, going nowhere at work and not very bright. Some of the ads are also funny, even if they are classist, tasteless, obnoxious and cruel. They are not nearly as funny as the cartoon the Best Buy employee got fired for making.
Mobile phones have long been status-symbols, in addition to being a force for empowerment of poor people around the world. Why use shame to try to push people to buy your phones? It’s just the kind of pseudo-edgy condescending humor that box store marketing insiders are likely to approve. If these people could make six figures giving nerds wedgies, they likely would. But now it’s the cool kids with highly functional mobile devices! (And the pricey, multi-year contracts.)
Anyway, the videos in this campaign are much funnier than the little songs that visitors are encouraged to email to their mobile-Neanderthal friends. Compare the two videos below and ask yourself which example of cruel mocking humor deserves a multi-million dollar contract and which deserves a firing from a sales job? (Note that the cartoon one has dirty words in it and will burn the ears of children.)
Then go visit the Best Buy microsite and email a link to a single mom you know, stuck in a dead end job, about how dumb her phone is. Good times! Go BestBuy!
