Apple to join the Television ad battle on AT&T's behalf with two spots tonight

Remember in Happy Days when Richie would get into trouble? The big bad guys would be about to punch the living daylights out of him and from around the corner came...The Fonz. The mere presence of Fonzie would be enough to chase the bully away and Richie and Fonz would leave arm in arm. Consider the bully to be Verizon, Richie is AT&T and The Fonz is Apple. The iPhone manufacturer is stepping into the AT&T-Verizon battle tonight with two spots designed to articulate to the public what AT&T's ads couldn't.

The spots are designed to show how a GSM network will allow for simultaneous voice and data usage by showing examples of things that the iPhone can do on AT&T's network that can't be done on Verizon's CDMA pipelines. No mention of Big Red was made by name; instead, the ad wants to know if "your network and your phone" can stay on a call while at the same time, browsing the web to get information.

There is no doubt that the spots have been created in response to the recent Verizon attacks on AT&T's 3G coverage and in one spot, calling the iPhone a "Misfit toy" because of the latter's smaller 3G coverage area. Even though it is clear that the Apple ads are directed at Verizon and its newest flagship Motorola DROID smartphone, will the new commercials be seen as an attempt to glorify the AT&T network, or will it be seen as just another iPhone commercial that shows off another feature of Apple's touchscreen marvel? The ads will run tonight on several highly viewed shows like Fox's "House M.D.", ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" and CBS' "How I met your Mother".

source: BusinessWeek via BGR

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