The Return of Apple Envy

Everybody wants to be Apple. Of course that's been the case for many years. And even though, in this spot, Amazon tries to brush off Apple like some failed, late 90's dot-com, I think they secretly have a little Apple envy in their system:

Man: Hey excuse me -- that's the new Kindle, isn't it, $79.

Woman: Best way to read, even in sunlight.

Great work, stop it right here. The commercial should be over at the 10 second mark. The Kindle is an awesome eReader. It does this one thing better than any other machine. Amazon differentiated itself, made its point clearly, and now they can call it a day.

Or, they can ruin the commercial....

Man: Yeah but I mean if you want to watch movies or surf the web.

Woman: I've got a Kindle Fire for that (looks a hundred feet away to a different Amazon tablet product being used by her children.)

"PUNT!" This has got to be one of the few examples in advertising where a company just throws its hands in the air, curses the heavens and says, "We give up." To have your only rebuttal be "No, but we make something else that does that" is just sad.

No one is going to carry around two devices. "This one's for readin', and this one's for videoin'." The woman's response should be that the regular Kindle isn't trying to be all things to all people -- it does one thing (displays text), and it does it well. It's for readers. End of story.

Man: Three Kindles. That's gotta be expensive.

Woman: Not really. Together, they're still less than that (points to Man's iPad.)

Yeah, fine, the iPad 2, at $499, is expensive. It's also far and away the top tablet on the market. But I can find a 16GB iPad for less than the $477 combined price of those three Amazon products. And I know this is a store return, but I still find it funny that the first one I found was on Amazon.

Man: Someone sitting here?

Woman: My husband.

Man: Yeah...

And a weird, anticlimactic ending to boot. Was there really enough sexual tension between these two that the audience had to see how the interaction ultimately ended? And judging by the man's resignation, he appears to be jealous of the unseen man's wife simply because this family owns three Kindles. So peculiar.

Amazon, this is not the way to go after Apple. You make fine, lower-cost products, and there's a market for that. But you don't make iPads -- and expecting people to haul around two tablet devices instead of buying an iPad is laughably dumb. So stick with your strategy -- and don't bring up Apple unless you actually have a claim to make.