Isn’t T-Mobile supposed to be a telecommunications company?
Not a YouTube video.
You probably have had this feeling. I know I have, as well most people. It is the feeling after you fail a test and have to report to mom or dad at home. In most cases, it is face to face news, but American telecommunications company T-Mobile is changing that up. Using the dialogue of a son texting his mother about a failed math test, T-Mobile uses a strong USP showing how they can do the math for you by choosing their service, and targeting two of the largest demographic groups (mothers and teenagers). T-Mobile does the job by using a realistic everyday conversation to advertise why they are better than their competition.
During the duration of the advertisement, T-Mobile is appealing towards nurture right out of the gate as the son in this commercial is talking about how his mother is so fantastic, how he loves her so much, and so on. When the mother eventually matches the pieces to the puzzle at the end of of the commercial saying, “You failed your math test, didn’t you?” In its earlier advertisement campaigns, T-Mobile had a similar commercial with its USP being Ariana Grande tickets for god sake. By using a realistic scenario of the need for nurturing, more people would probably not select the skip button on YouTube after five and a half seconds. This is probably a conversation that happens on T-Mobile servers every single day, 365 days a year. T-Mobile instead of using something that happens maybe once a year, uses a norm that happens frequently, and makes it appear to the viewer that T-Mobile is there for you in good times and bad. And with T-Mobile’s USP saying that you don’t have to be some brainiac, (Like the guy in Verizon commercials) to make the right choice in choosing a cellular provider.
Throughout the advertisement, the target audience is clear. T-Mobile is going after your typical suburban mother and teenage boys, two of the most important demographic groups to go after. And by using this advertisement, it enforces the norm about how teenage boys are, they are too lazy to straight up tell their mothers about a failure. It also reinforces the norm about how kids most often when talking about academic failures go to their mother and not their father. Most of the when people think of their father and when they are going to tell them that they failed a quiz, usually they think of physical punishment, because that’s how a lot of dads discipline. And teenagers would rather tell their mothers because stereotypically, they would handle it in a much more calm and non-physical manner. While T-Mobile has used some surprising USP’s in earlier campaigns, nothing is surprising here, as the norms are continue to be enforced of teenagers being lazy about telling their parents about their failures, and mothers being told this information instead of their male counterparts.
At the end of all of this extreme drama, one message becomes clear and stands out from the crowd. Teenage boys don’t usually send very many affectionate messages to their parents, and that they are only telling their mothers to clean the wound of the trouble that they have gotten themselves into. Typical.
