dentyne: make face time.
riding the T extensively this past week, my face was inundated by all of these new dentyne ads. at first glance, i felt like i was sort of drowning in the excessive amounts of pda all around me…but then after realizing that it was a clever call to humanity to tangibly reconnect with our loved ones, in the form of chewing gum marketing, i smiled.
some tagline snippets:
– Power down. Log off. Unplug. Have mercy on your thumbs.
– Browse the World Wide Something Else. Send some not-so-instant-messages.
– Undo. Hit cancel. Be together.
– The Original Instant Message [a kiss]
– Friend Request Accepted [a hug]
– The Original Voicemail [a whisper]
– Send & Receive [an embrace]
– Chatroom Full [a group-crowding scene, orgy perhaps.]
….is this an example of using ‘detechnology’ as a marketing strategy?
“It’s a nice concept, and made all the more interesting by initiatives such as the Make Face Time website, that automatically shuts down after 3 minutes. It doesn’t count the time you spend checking out various parts of the site though, so I don’t know if it’s as good an initiative as it sounds, though the premise certainly is. The site, for example, also has a ‘Smiley Chamber of Doom’ that purports to smash all smileys into bits because they try to subsitute those faces for actual human emotions, which, Dentyne is trying to tell us, isn’t quite right.”
Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments
Tags: advertising, detechnology, marketing, the T
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name: tiffany chu
location: cambridge, ma (or san francisco / copenhagen / bridgewater, nj)
industry: architecture + media studies
role: bright, bushy MIT student.
a space for favorites 
Oh Iffany, I wonder if they have these ads on the NYC Subway system. Too bad I don’t do public transportation out here in LA.
yes they do.