Most people have probably seen this commercial by now, as it has been airing quite often on popular TV Channels recently:

But, interestingly enough, only after seeing that commercial for probably the 20th time in the past couple of weeks did I notice what Amazon’s main tactic was. Perhaps at first watch even you didn’t notice what I’m going to discuss. The speaker on the iPad Air’s side has a completely obvious British accent. Whereas the speaker on the side of the Amazon Kindle has a distinctly deeper voice with a truly “American” feel to it.

I was very surprised that I did not notice this immediately when I watched the commercial the first time as after noticing it and rewatching the commercial, it seemed so very obvious! However this is why this tactic intrigued me so much. I think, although I failed to catch the subtle reference myself, most other people must have picked up on that immediately. A very clever way to mock Jony Ive, Senior Vice President of Design at Apple who hails from Great Britain and is the mastermind behind most of Apple’s products.

British accents are, for the most part, just jokes here in North America, which makes Apple’s iPad Air seem almost laughable in comparison to the Kindle. The combination of the difference in voices, and comparison of specifications in which the Kindle has a lead is a very effective tool in communicating its value and capturing the audience’s attention.

I reflected on this commercial after realizing Amazon’s strategy and looked further into such commercials which target large tech giants and came across some by Microsoft as well. Seems to me as if the smaller companies are the only ones who face the need to showcase ads which have direct comparisons to the leading products. Amazon does this with Apple, and Microsoft does it with Google.