I am so glad someone has started putting these commercials on YouTube (so that I can in turn steal them and put them on my own site). I’ve wanted to comment on these ever since seeing them months and months ago. Have a look at an ad for the Jiiiiitterbug! {stupid music} Jiiiiiitterbug! cell phone for senior citizens.
I’m sure she’d be ok with the regular phone with bigger buttons, but if I gave that 3-button jobby to my grandmother, she would probably beat me with it. Then toss me the phone and say "Just press the bottom button, dear! Jiiiitterbug!"
My grandma is closing in on 80, and she seems to be doing just fine on her plain ol’, standard issue "young people’s" model (my quotes, not what she calls it). I mean, am I the only one that finds this phone and ad a little demeaning? And I truly love this: they top it off with older folks (a lot of them don’t even look all that old!) in the commercial being stereotypically crotchety. "And it’s not bogged down with a gazillion features like those other phones! Finally, a simple, fairly useless phone to match my simple, fairly useless mind!" I mean, come on! No one? I can’t speak for my future, 80-year-old self, but I would be pissed!
With the artistic help of a friend, I’ve decided to really dispense with the bullshit and bring Jitterbug’s point home to the senior citizenry. I present you the Jitterbug Adchops model:
Now hurry up and die already!
March 18th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Okay- what’s the deal? I think there’s a simplistic cell phone that’s marketed toward parents of preteens (to purchase for their preteens, as the preteens themselves would rather die of the plague than be the pariah caught carrying the clunky device) called the “FireFly.” Is this done by the same company- or is it something about pests that says “Technology, only not scary?”
I realize the jitterbug was a popular dance during WWII. I hope when I’m 80 I won’t be using a “Marcarena” to call the hospital (or to request pudding- hehehe).