Same Message, Different Metaphors

When you think of mobile telephones, the emphasis is on "mobile". In an ideal world, you should be able to carry it anywhere you want and still keep in touch with your network of contacts. Mobile telephone service providers, try to fulfill this customer need and spend millions of dollars establishing a network providing maximum coverage at an optimum cost. They also spend some marketing dollars to apprise the consumer of this important fact.  I am sure it would be painfully obvious by now that I am talking about Verizon, the US telecom giant, famous for its ads featuring the "Verizon guy" and his hordes of followers (technicians, employees, etc.), which is a metaphor for the network.

The famous Verizon guy started out as a lone tester, who went to various dark zones of the world and cried "Can you hear me now?" into his mobile phone. Later on he started following people around with hordes of Verizon employees, technicians, etc. It is one of the most recognizable advertisements and the Verizon guy is an icon by himself. Now, imagine if you are walking about in the park and call your buddy on your Verizon phone and turn around to see "the Network". That is exactly what happened to one guy, as seen in the following video.



It is a brilliant piece of marketing by Verizon to take a metaphor to the next step. One can imagine the word of mouth cascading effect this move resulted in.

A few thousand miles to the east, India is a fertile battleground for two large mobile operators - Hutch (now Vodafone) and Airtel. Hutch, as the brand was known initially, was known particularly for its network coverage and it had brilliant ads that conveyed this competitive advantage. But they chose a different metaphor, as seen in the following ad.



Instead of using a "network tester" who later morphed into "the network" itself, Hutch went for the metaphor of a dog following his master around. Note that, by using a puppy, the ad does away with creepiness and brings an endearing element into it. Also, the ad above is applicable across cultures. Dogs have been man's best friends long before there were countries and cultural barriers. This is especially relevant in India where there are 15 official languages and 700 dialects spoken, and with hundreds of different subcultures. The same ad could be used for Verizon seamlessly, since it stretches across cultural  boundaries. Also, the dog denotes "service", since the dog always tries to please his owner. This campaign was a runaway hit in India.

I found it very interesting to compare and contrast these two highly successful ad campaigns, where the message was the same, but the metaphors used were different.