Nova Scotia is hoping to lure gadget-fetishists into the province by preying on their weakness for portable devices that try to do everything.  

A website for the Pomegranate Phone popped up earlier this week featuring snazzy animation, and video demonstrations of the phone that escalate from practical features like a voice translator to ridiculous add-ons like a harmonica. (Full Disclosure: My band has a song featured in this campaign)

When you click a button to find out the release date, you are transported to a website for Nova Scotia Come to Life with a transition that says, “Having everything you want in a phone may be a stretch, but a place that has everything definitely exists.”  Then you see documentary-style testimonials about Nova Scotian entrepreneurs who left the province then returned to settle down.  I guess the goal of the campaign is to target anyone who left Nova Scotia and has a predisposition to new technology and convince them to return home.

I like the satirization of the cult of iPhone in the first half of the campaign, but the contrast with the earnest content at the end is a bit jarring. I wish the pay-off maintained some the irreverent tone of the rest of the site. But the video of the executives playing harmonica in a business meeting is pretty awesome.

Tags: iphone, nova scotia, viral marketing

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 at 2:33 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.