Truth In Advertising

[sbisson]

One of the perils of a big conference is the amount of paperwork that you end up with. Not just the usual piles of presentation printouts and press releases, but also the vast amount of advertising bumpf you're handed as you walk around the exhibition stands.

TechEd 2003 was a little different. There was one piece of advertising that stood out, head and shoulders above the competition. It wasn't a big piece, and it wasn't something that should have appealed to more than a small number of mobile application developers: a flyer for Microsoft's Windows Powered Smartphone Developer Kit.

Cut to look like a picture of the Compal device that MS uses as a test device in the kit, it was a largish piece of paper that opened up to tell developers where they could order the kit, and what marketing support would be offered for their applications:

However, turn it over, and you'd see a disclaimer:

Now, that was funny...

(Or else we'd just seen too many advertising flyers already...)

Comments

Shame you didn't have a pic of it held in a hand!

[(Anonymous)]

The pic as printed here doesn't show just how big it is! :-) Guy

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

Looks kinda nice. Does the keypad slide up under the screen (like the Nokia 7650)? Does it have handwriting recognition? Could be a neat device.

Add to the list of daft disclaimers (my favourite is still "Warning: may contain nuts" on a packet of peanuts).

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

That is fun - especially the "and flatter".