AT&T Holiday Commerical

AT&T Holiday Commercial:

Last week I watching Sunday night football with my family, and my father brought up a point about AT&T' s recent Holiday commercial and how it had the 1964 puppet characters from "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". He was wondering how AT&T could use those characters from such a classic series of films, I told him that they must of paid a lot of money to re-create this characters. As I was researching the process of how AT&T earned the rights to these characters for this commercial I came across a bigger controversy based of these campaign plans.

AT&T created an amid snowy landscape, where Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer steps into an AT&T store. During this stop motion animation, other customers in the store consist of elves and reindeer. Rudolph explains to the AT&T representative Lily, that he wants the new iPhone so he can play reindeer games. She informs him that if he gets any iPhone he can also get a discounted iPad mini, which causes his nose to light up. She asks him one final question -- what are "reindeer games?" The answer: regular games with the word "reindeer" added to them.


Verizon rolled out a trio of new anti-AT&T ads over the weekend and they are brutal in their criticism of the carrier’s 3G network coverage. The standout among the three, this re-creation of the “Island of Misfit Toys” scene from the 1964 Rankin/Bass stop-motion animated Christmas television special, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” “The ‘Island of Misfit Toys’ television advertisement is a parody of the ‘Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer’ television special that depicts an island to which Rudolph travels after escaping an attack from the Abominable Snow Monster.”

The advertisement begins with outdated, discarded toys expressing surprise at the arrival of an Apple iPhone. The red Charlie-in-the-Box says ‘Hey! Check out the new guy!’ The spotted elephant, in a surprised manner, asks the iPhone ‘What are you doing here? You can download apps and browse the web!’ and a Dolly for Sue asserts that ‘Yeah. People will love you [the iPhone].'” The complaint continues: “In response, a blue AT&T coverage map depicting large swaths of ‘white’ or ‘blank’ space across the United States appears above the iPhone. All the toys exclaim ‘Oh . . .’ in dismay, while the iPhone wilts and its screen turns dark. The toy airplane then assures the iPhone that ‘you’re going to fit right in here!'”

AT&T adds Verizon's "Island of Misfit Toys" holiday ads to lawsuit, and demands they be yanked off air. These types of actions preformed by both Verizon and AT&T push their limits when it comes to comparative advertising. Comparative advertising is a marketing strategy in which a company shows how its product or service is superior to that of its competitors by comparing the benefits and costs within the advertisement itself. A comparative advertising campaign may involve printing a side-by-side comparison of the features of a company's products next to those of its competitor.

 I thought this debacle was extremely interesting, because from a marketing student's perspective I could tell that those commercials represented behaviors of an extreme level of comparative advantage. Although there is a major controversy with Verizon and AT&T both companies did a great job in connecting an emotional connection with these characters. The average consumer will probably only notice the characters and its nostalgic effect, and not the controversy between to cell phone carriers.


> CLICK HERE>>Verizon Holiday Commercial


>CLICK HERE>>AT&T Holiday Commercial