July 26, 2000
Article

Campaign Review: BT Cellnet's Less-Than-Exciting WAP Wrap around The Guardian Guide

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Remember the TV and billboard ads signalling the launch of
BT Cellnet’s WAP phone? We do – a computer-generated
chappie (no genitals, natch) whizzing through all sorts of
exciting, brightly-coloured doo-dahs on his surf-board
phone? We also remember how disappointed people were when
they discovered that WAP really can’t offer anything in the
whizzy, exciting, brightly-coloured line just at the
moment...

So we were amused, but not entirely surprised, to see one
of BT Cellnet’s new WAP ads – a false cover wrapped around
The Guide in last Saturday’s Guardian. The CG chappie is
still stood there on his phone, bless him, but now he’s
stripped of more than just his manhood – gone are all the
Web-esque images he used to surf so happily. Now he has to
make do with a few dull screen shots of actual WAP content
(you know: football results, weather news, and oh-so-dreary
‘entertainment’ listings) on a plain white background.
It’s all a bit apologetic, really - almost as if somebody’s
saying ‘sorry if we misled you before, folks, but this is
what you REALLY get from WAP’.

So it’s two ‘Nay’s this week – one for making people think
that WAP equals WWW, and the other for underlining the
error in a big way.

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