Last week, my boss approached me with an ad that he stumbled on in the May's print edition of
The Atlantic. What's remarkable about the ad is that it worked to make him (an avid reader) aware of the Sony Reader for the first time. What's less remarkable, at least in my inexperienced opinion about marketing, is that Sony picked an EMPTY gate seating area suggesting no one is actually using the Reader (which is hardly what they must have had in mind). Sure, the passengers could have boarded the aircraft already, but then, why depict the empty seats? I just don't get it.
If I was in charge of marketing, I would pick authentic Reader fans from MobileRead and run a series of ads featuring real life scenes, such as
this one by MobileReader LaughingVulcan.
A hi-res image of the ad is attached to this thread.