If you watch tv, you see commercials. That’s the way it works. So this holiday season, when I first saw T-Mobile’s “4G Wonderland” spot (embedded at the bottom of this post), I was appalled. How is it possible that an ad agency or the executives at T-Mobile could let something go that to even the most casual observer is, well, appalling?
If you haven’t seen it, the commercial rips (parodies if you like) off the Christmas classic, “Winter Wonderland.” Although in the T-Mobile version, you aren’t “walking in a winter wonderland,” you’re “walking in a 4G wonderland.” That’s fine on paper, in print, or even on a digital screen, but phonetically, it sounds like “orgy.”
I understand certain things about advertising and marketing, I’ve grown up in an age where the definitions of both and the broad reach of both has grown exponentially, but on basic cable, I should never hear a commercial, that sounds like you’re “walking in an orgy wonderland.”
I’m not offended, although I’m sure there are those who are. I’m just shocked that, no one in the T-Mobile brass or the ad agency heard “orgy” when they sang “4G”. To me it just seems like a no-brainer. And from the first time I heard the commercial, that’s what I though they were sings, because of course, I was listening to the TV, not watching it.
I just don’t understand it, we’re not in ancient Rome or Greece, orgies aren’t wholly accepted by the general populace. So my question and the thing that’s grinding my gears, so to speak, is how did no one hear what, according to everyone I’ve asked whose seen the commercial, is elves singing about an “orgy wonderland?” Even with controversy what’s the marketing strategy behind letting that one slip?
T-Mobile Orgy Wonderland