UK perspective on Apple’s Ad ban
By Ben Robinson on Friday, November 28th, 2008 at 12:24 PM PST In Apple, Ideas and rants
Zooooooooooooooooom. iPhone 3G is really fast.
James wrote a great post a coupla days back on the banning of one of Apple’s Ads in the UK. It was covered quite extensively in the UK by The Guardian, and also the BBC.
So now it’s time for the UK office of IntoMobile to weigh in (with considerable weight!!), and say – actually, the Ad IS kinda misleading.
Picking up on a comment “mdk” made on James’ article, my feeling also is that the problem isn’t with the “really fast” statement (as such) – because O2 (NYSE: TEF)’s 3G (on which the iPhone runs) is ‘really fast’ compared with EDGE – and that’s not really something that can be disputed.
The issue at hand is with the way the handset performs in the Ad – it runs at some lightning speed – and THAT is the problem part – the iPhone3G has never in my experience gone anywhere near as quickly as that. Looking at the indicators in the top-left of the screen UI in the Ad, you can’t clearly see what network it is supposed to be connected to – which leads me to think the device in the Ad was filmed in a simulated environment.
Whatever the actual case, I do think (as do some of our readers) that the Ad is a bit misleading – either you show the phone running at real speed, or you write “simulated” at the bottom of the screen – but then in an Ad about speed, that wouldn’t be very good, would it ?! 
I’m Brit living in America. Americans are lied to constantly and blatently in adverts. They tolerate it in a way that Brits don’t. If they didn’t tolerate it, the lies wouldn’t be allowed… They don’t seem to get the fact tht in Britain we *demand* that adverts are not lying to us. Sure we all know that many adverts skirt around the truth and push the limits where they can – but then that’s why the compaints commission exists, right?
Keep them honest!
I love this phone….It changes my life too…..
Sorry Steve, that’s not true.
I’ve worked in advertising. I’d say that a good 80% of all adverts in Britain contain lies of some sort, even if it’s just photoshop’d images!
The people who complained about the advert—all 17 of them—are probably Blackberry, Nokia, SE, Samsung or LG fans who thought they’d stir it up a little and I can’t blame them for that.
I actually perfer the American advertising method, it’s much more entertaining! Whoever makes their purchasing decision based on an advert is rather foolish. All TV advertising should be viewed as entertainment.
That’s just my opinion, obviously. ^_^