Review: Telstra T-Hub, ‘Alexander Graham Bell’
The steampunk head of Alexander Graham Bell.
Client: Telstra T-Hub
Title: ‘Alexander Graham Bell’
Agency: Three Drunk Monkeys
When I was watching the Logies last Sunday, I was repeatedly subjected to ads for a mysterious new product from Telstra called a T-Hub. I was left in the dark as to what a T-Hub actually was, but the disembodied head of Alexander Graham Bell, the Scottish inventor of the telephone, seemed very invested in it.
But as this Bell-end pithily exclaims, “Great steaming haggis, what is it?”
Basically, it’s a combination of a traditional landline phone and the applications you might find on a 3G mobile. It has an 18cm touch screen that enables users to make and receive phone calls, it’s connected to the internet, and can play music and video.
It comes across like your mum wouldn’t let anyone in the family have their own iPad, but insisted on getting a “family iPad” that’s permanently parked next to the phone and used purely for domestic purposes. Can you imagine how irritating this device would be if someone in the family wanted to quickly look something up, but it was being hogged by someone else? (“Mu-um! I need to see when my movie’s on, but Craig’s watching stupid YouTube videos!”)
So, it’s already a bit of a turkey to advertise. But the campaign is so diffuse and unfocused that it took me further research online before I had any idea at all what Justin Drape, Scott Nowell and the team from Three Drunk Monkeys were going on about. They can’t even decide if Bell is meant to be pleased or angry at the emergence of the T-Hub.
And is he meant to be an actual head (the ‘YouTube Kitty’ TVC shows him fogging up his bell jar with delight) or just a steampunk hologram? Either way, the idea of a disembodied head of an historical figure is a total Futurama ripoff.
I wonder whose actual idea it was, because it seems like advertising by committee: the campaign is the work of 16 agency creatives and producers, plus extra production, media and digital retouching staff.
Their campaign comprises a digital short film on the minisite, several different TV commercials, some single-page and 1/4 double-page-spread newspaper ads, several double-page magazine spreads, and a newspaper insert in the form of an old-fashioned gazette that, when unfolded, reveals a timeline of telephone inventions on the reverse side.
The ‘YouTube Kitty’ TVC – which has already inspired a “Play T-Hub Off, Keyboard Cat” remix – has been roundly ridiculed on industry blog Mumbrella, for good reason. The things I took away from it were: 1) The T-Hub has something to do with the internet; 2) Telstra is profoundly uncool if it is only just discovering Keyboard Cat; 3) It’s just generally depressing that the best way Three Drunk Monkeys could think to advertise a supposedly revolutionary new product was by hijacking an internet meme that’s already been done to death.
The only part of this campaign I found amusing at all was a headline from the ‘gazette’: “Telephone Inventor Insists On People Always Including His Middle Name”.
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These ads annoy the hell out of me. If Alexander Graham Bell was around today, I’m sure he’d be thrilled with all the new gadgets, the man was an inventor!
It also took me quite a while to figure out exactly what the T-Hub actually does, AGB certainly doesn’t know.
I’d actually quite like to have a little internet access point in the kitchen next to the phone, but these ads don’t make the T-Hub seem like they’re the best way of doing this.
Thanks for this review Mel.
I don’t understand how Telstra could have duffed the launch of a new product so badly. Futurama has done the head in a jar thing to death already.
Contrast the Alexander Graham Bell ads with the new iPad launch which shows people using the device, with the focus on the device.
If you want the mums, grannies and other non Gen Y and non-tech savvy types to use this product, then actually show them what it does and help them imagine it being a useful part of their lives.
The only bit of media on the T-Hub that had me interested in the product was an interview by the Fin Review earlier this year with the head of marketing at Telstra – genuine enthusiasm about a new product that explained what it was about.
Given the lack of airplay of the head in a jar ads over the last few weeks you have to wonder if a new ad campaign is in the works that actually promotes the product.
Talk about annoying. So great to hear that the ad could only appeal to the luddites and retirees who woke up and saw that there was something trying to be an ‘ipad’ made by Telstra.
There is all sorts of knock offs going on in this ad. Graham Bell has only a small part to play with the telephone and is a good figurehead for Telstra – Graham Bell STOLE the actual telephone idea from some other poor inventor from the patent office. So I think the Ipad or iinet’s ‘BoB’ have little to worry about this poorly concieved campaign.
Where is the backing track ? Are we supposed to be in awe of the fantastic stupid head in silence? Or the annoying script? I rarely go the net to rant but this would have to be the most annoying ad I have seen. Please, make it stop!