Even advertisers want you off smartphone
Heineken last month introduced what it calls the Boring Phone, an early-00s style flip-to-answerdevice featuring a keypad, flashlight, FM radio, low-resolution camera and not much else. With an ability to make calls and send texts, but under no circumstances access social media, the phone is designed to be a portal back to the days when people would socialize in person without continually maintaining parallel lives on the internet.
“Young generations are craving release from their smartphonesandtheconstantbuzzing and dinging, especially on nights out and during social occasions,” said Nabil Nasser, global head of the Heineken brand. “We want to give them the freedom to discover that there is more to their social life when they are less on their phone.”
The Boring Phone is really a marketing campaign disguised as a product drop, with only 5,000 units available via giveaways, part of a wave of advertising tapping the widespread fear technology is ruining our ability to fully experience and enjoy the real world.
Tequila brand Jose Cuervo
last year ran a sweepstakes for hundreds of its own so-called dumbphones,inanotherexample, urging drinkers to “go off” their smartphones to “go off” in reallife.This year’s Super Bowl ad by web design company Squarespace imagined what would happen if nobody noticed an alien arrival becausehumanitywouldn’tlook up from its screens.
The message extends beyond borders. Chinese electronics firm Oppo last December ran a campaign encouraging consumers across Asia to put down their phones at the dinner table.
The advertisers are tapping into a concern over the role of technology in society, and particularly in the mental health of young people , that has grown as social media and smartphones have become omnipresent. Even Snapchat is running an ad campaign positioning its social-media app as an “antidote to social media.”
But marketing executives are treading gently, tending toward humor rather than activism, partly because their brands are at least as present in the digital world as any extremely online person. They advertise on the