Motorola
How Motorola Gave Cell Phones a Wake Up Call
The Ad Age spot of the week showed us something we didn’t know we wanted…and the industry had to have.
The Challenge
Motorola was ready to disrupt the market with the Moto X—the first customizable smartphone that responded to voice commands and launched the camera with a flick of the wrist. But in a category flooded with similar-looking, functionally indistinct devices, they needed a bold, behavior-shifting narrative to make consumers pay attention—and make competitors sweat.
The Concept
Enter: “Lazy Phones”
What if other phones were just…lazy? We flipped the traditional feature-first product pitch and positioned the Moto X as the only phone that was always listening, instantly responsive, and personalized just for you. The campaign celebrated the phone’s proactive intelligence—and gently mocked the passive sluggishness of every device that came before it.
Broadcast + Online Video
I developed the hero campaign concept that grew into a series of high-energy TV and online spots. These videos juxtaposed the hardworking Moto X with a world full of underperforming phones—bringing humor, personality, and product functionality together in a way that stuck.
Social-First Engagement
As part of our social activation, I ghost-wrote tweets for comedian Sarah Silverman, helping to frame the device’s benefits in her signature irreverent voice. The result: authentic, buzz-worthy content that resonated with both tech lovers and comedy fans.
The First-Ever Interactive Print Ad
In Wired magazine, we launched a groundbreaking innovation: a color-changing print ad that let readers customize the phone’s color at the touch of a button. It was the first of its kind and generated:
72M earned impressions
1M+ demo views—84x WIRED’s total circulation
Cannes Lions shortlist recognition
AI-Enabled Outdoor
We introduced a color-matching bus shelter that used AI image mappting to scan your outfit and recommend a Moto X to match. At Coachella and other festivals, our color-shifting photo booths allowed attendees to pose with different phones and share instantly–creating vibrant, custom-branded user-generated content in real time.
The Impact
By combining a cultural revelation with cutting-edge tech, we turned a phone no one was looking at into a story the world couldn’t ignore—and inspired an industry to follow suit.
• 15M+ YouTube views in the first month
• 7M views in just the first 3 days
• Ad Age Spot of the Week
• Led YouTube’s earned ad rankings during launch
• Re-positioned Motorola as the challenger pushing innovation forward