The Christmas that almost wasn't but then was

As a non-Christian, I'm all for not having that religion shoved down my throat, but most of its holidays are so secularized these days that hearing about them on television doesn't exactly throw me into a tizzy. Don't tell that to the lawyers at Alltel.



Santa Claus: "This is the story of the holiday that almost didn't rock!"

Say, uh, which holiday would that be, Santa Claus? Wait, wait, don't tell me... Purim? No, I've got it: Greek Independence Day.

Santa Claus: "You see, Alltel Wireless has a great deal on the MOTOROKR and 50 free songs!"

Kudos to Alltel (and Campbell-Ewald, their agency) in this case; it's a good upfront use of branding before we get to the dopier parts of this ad.

Santa Claus: "But some naughty boys tried to stop Chad!"

Wait, who's Chad? Is he one of those Greek freedom fighters? Look, Alltel. You can't treat your spokesman as though he's some famous advertising character or assume the viewer has seen all your other stupid ads.

Verizon: "These phones really do rock."
Cingular/AT&T: "Too bad no one'll ever get one!"

Yeah, if Alltel were to go out of business, where would customers turn for phones that could also play music? Solid argument there. Can you see why the "big four" are so threatened? Alltel's at the crest of the wave! If only that translated into market share.

Santa Claus: "But they didn't get far!"

Competition getting you down? Why not rough them up a bit? I actually don't mind this Rankin/Bass parody that much because those old Christmas specials are majorly fucked up by modern standards (seriously, watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer this year and tell me it's not totally insane), but seeing a reindeer puncture a tire with his antlers or an elf smashing a headlight with a candy cane is kind of creepy and off-putting, and really doesn't make me root for Santa and Chad even though I'm ostensibly supposed to be doing so.

Santa Claus: "And the holiday that almost didn't rock truly rocked!"

Hang on, I'm almost there... tip of my tongue... Tsagaan Sar? That's gotta be it.

In principle there's nothing wrong with the all-inclusive term "holidays" for the Christmas season, of course, since it encompasses Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and anything else in the general vicinity, and doesn't assume the religion of the viewer. But you can't do that and use Santa Claus - he may be a pretty secular figure these days but he's still associated exclusively with Christmas. You can't boot Christmas out of the conversation and then use only figures associated with that holiday - if you're going to do that, would it have been so hard to throw a menorah in there somewhere, or a dreidel, or something, for God's sake, so you don't end up with this ridiculous over-PC use of "holiday" when you just mean Christmas?

I guess Alltel makes up for it by giving Santa the most miscast Santa Claus voice in claymation history (it's even worse in this other spot). Santa is traditionally given a deeper register and speaks authoritatively, but here he just sounds like some random dude, and kind of oddly high at that. Why not just go all out and have Nathan Lane do the voice?

Come and get your smug

You can just smell the desperation in every Alltel ad:



Oh man, those other wireless companies are such dorks. How could I ever use one of them, when Alltel is represented by a cool guy with spiky blond hair?

Idiotic things about this ad include the following:

* Using the unbelievably cliché tactic of personifying your competitor(s) as less hip and/or attractive than your pitchman
* Suggesting that Verizon, Sprint, Cingular and T-Mobile would ever act in unison, when in fact they fight rather fiercely for market share
* Further suggesting that these four companies could give even half a shit about Alltel when they combine for 88% of the US wireless market and Alltel, despite recent growth, is still a pretty distant fifth

Obviously Alltel is going to want to talk up its advantages, but couldn't it just have run a commercial doing so? The ads in which it takes on the "Big Four" are just kind of pathetic when it isn't a close race at the moment, and Alltel doesn't exactly have the "hip" factor of something like Apple that could allow it to get away with this kind of campaign. Alltel's aiming at so many different targets that it can't even do more than mention a single benefit that it has, while no doubt intentionally glossing over things like network reliability and range of service (which I'm going to go ahead and say matter more to most wireless users than a list of ten people you can call for free). So much time is spent on the "ha ha, what dorks" angle that Campbell-Ewald needed to make, what, six of these things, one for each feature? What an absolute waste of everyone's time.