And Me, And You, Android

Click here to see the 'And You' film from Android

The party’s not over ‘til the fat robot sings! Except, well, Android’s ubiquitous icon has been spotted doing just that – but according to the manufacturer, the party is only just beginning.

This week Android launched a new multimedia campaign focussed on revamping and repositioning their image. We noticed their new catchphrase, “be together. not the same.” calling to us from a bold double-page spread on the inside front cover of City AM this morning. Further investigation discovered it in the middle of Metro, splayed across the top of www.android.com, and stuck in a dozen other places around the web. 

Android is of course an open-source system, developed in private by Google until its periodic releases to the public. Other manufacturers can then pick up the platform and modify it to run on their own devices. Largely for this reason, Android dominates the smartphone OS market, with roughly ¾ of all smartphones sold using a variant of its code.

This latest campaign is designed to coincide with the release of Android’s new update, Android 5.0 or ‘Lollipop’.

It’s also timed to promote the announcement of two new Nexus products, the Nexus 6 smartphone and the Nexus 9 tablet. These bigger, more expensive versions of Google’s flagship mobile hardware (which of course run Android) aim to capture a larger slice of the top-end mobile market and its affluent consumers.

However, none of Android’s advertising makes any mention of either the update or the new devices. Instead, it focusses on the crowd-sourced and inclusive nature of the platform and all the people who use it, showing a quirky, cool image, complete with re-dressed robot icons.

Make your own android here!

Several different web ads are running and the new ‘Androidify’ app lets downloaders customize their own Android character and an initially dead link promoted during Walking Dead on Monday now points to Android’s homepage, tagged with ‘#betogethernotthesame’ and populated with new information on all Android works. The advertising successfully directs attention away from the hardware debate to the platform powering these pieces, and all the possibilities it contains.

So KISS your preconceptions goodbye, and keep an antennae out for more Android news. Hopefully it doesn’t get too robotic…

#PurePoint