Firstly, I’m a humongous fan of that Cupertino Firm, yup THAT one.  I pretty much dig everything they do, and that includes their ads. So at the risk of sounding biased, I’m gonna go ahead and review the new iPhone 3GS TV advertisement (I think u kinda know already where this is headed:).

Even the smartest of phones out there, currently, need to be promoted smartly and this ad does just that.  It starts off with a Husband wanting to buy an espresso maker for his wife. The premise is that simple, but yet super effective.  Why you ask? Coz I think each one of us have our own product pre-buy research process, and it could sometimes be a long drawn out, tedious course for most of us. But this ad shows you how simple it is do the research and decide on a product quickly, all using just one device.

So, here is the sequence of steps the husband carries out on his iPhone to zero in on an espresso maker. He fires up the Safari browser on his 3GS to research Espresso machines on ProductWiki, which is a crowd sourced product review site. He reads up deets on the espresso maker, but is unsure what color his wife would prefer. He copies a couple of images (a red & a black machine), pastes it into an sms and sends it to her sister. Cut to the next shot, he is already in front of a red espresso maker, recommended by his wife’s sister.  He now launches the ‘Red Laser’ app on his phone (way to plug in the app, Apple:), which is an ‘impossibly accurate bar code reader’, according to app maker. The app captures the bar code via the phone’s camera, does a quick product comparison and tells the user if a cheaper deal could be found anywhere else. To his luck, there is a cheaper espresso machine available just around the corner. He now gets to the store with the help of directions from Google maps.

And voila, this entire process making him a ‘smarter & faster shopper’!

I loved this ad for its simplicity, effectiveness and total non-pretentiousness. With zero jargons to boot, it appealed directly to me and I presume to you too. I happen to own the 3GS and I could see myself using all the features and functionality to do my product research. I also liked the perceived reduction in the entire research to decision life-cycle that Apple projects through this ad. Check out the embed attached to watch the ad and judge for yourself.

On a separate note, but still on the iPhone 3GS, I’d just like to end by saying that pure evil has never looked and performed so good:). I do recommend you to buy this kick ass machine (after all that’s the point of any ad, innit, to make you pick one up), as it’ll surely enhance your awesomeness!!