Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Amazon's "might as well buy two, you are going to break one very quickly" ad campaign



I've posted before on Amazon's annoying series of "People being really stupid with their Kindles" commercials, but this one deserves it's own blog entry.

I got my Kindle almost three years ago.  I take it with me everywhere.  Usually it's in a protective faux-leather case which will prevent the screen from getting scratched and will offer some protection if it's broken, but won't save it if it falls into a puddle (let alone a pool, or an ocean.)  When I take it to the beach, it's in a special hard plastic shell case with rubber stoppers protecting the on/off button and power port.*

Ads like this actually make me cringe.  Anyone dumb enough to just stroll around a beach, sit in a pool, etc. holding a Kindle is either too stupid to be trusted with electronics, or wealthy enough to simply not care if they drop it and it's instantly ruined.  And yet, I can see people bringing their Kindles to the beach or the pool based on these ads, having an accident, and then getting a "sorry, that damage is not covered" lecture from the helpful person on the other end of the phone when Amazon is called.  When the distraught customer complains that ads like this strongly imply that Kindles and Water mix just fine, perhaps the operator replies with something like "you were really supposed to be enjoying the hot blonde in the bikini,** not imagining that these are safe places to use the Kindle.  I mean, they are thin, fragile ELECTRONIC DEVICES, stupid!"

I must say, I have very little sympathy for anyone who does get their Kindle scratched by sand or waterlogged (or sat on when you forget it's in your back pocket, moron) because they treated it like this way.  Such people just can't have nice things.

*More often than not, when I take it to the beach, it stays back at the beach house.  Because hard shell case or no, I really can't afford to be replacing my Kindle because a rogue wave (or can of soda) decided to take it out.  But that's just me.

**She IS quite easy on the eyes (does she really think that guys keep "accidentally" hitting her with beach balls and bumping into her?) and at least she isn't doing what 99 percent of girls I see walking on the beach are always doing- squinting at her cell phone.  I saw one of those idiots drop her phone in the surf once.  Made my whole summer.

1 comment:

  1. This sort of ad really annoys me for slightly more than the reason of 'treat a delicate piece of high tech cavalierly'. That's because I occasionally come across the results of said stupidity and end up thinking about how unappreciative people are these days.

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