Dive Brief:
- Google-owned Android has teamed with comedian Ziwe Fumudoh for an effort asserting that the green text bubbles exchanged in messages between iPhone and non-iPhone devices are costing Apple adherents love, per details shared with Marketing Dive.
- Timed to Valentine’s Day, the campaign includes a video, “Finding Love with Ziwe,” that leverages Fumudoh’s satirical sense of humor as she interviews real people to highlight the stigma against green text bubbles in dating. Agency David Miami spearheaded the creative.
- The marketing play follows Apple’s announcement that it will be adopting Rich Communication Services (RCS), a more advanced version of the SMS, to bring better messaging interoperability between iPhones and Android devices, though messages reportedly will still be green.
Dive Insight:
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Android is coming forward with the message that green text bubbles are no reason to pass off a potential suitor — unless that suitor is Apple. The playful move rides on the heels of Apple’s announcement last fall that it will soon be adopting RCS, a messaging standard that allows for richer communication than the decades-old SMS, notably around stronger media sharing capabilities.
RCS for years has been supported by Google and a number of phone carriers, including Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. Apple, on the other hand, has openly resisted the standard in favor of its own innovation, iMessage, meaning that an RCS message sent to an iPhone would default to the SMS format and be marked with a green text bubble versus the blue bubbles used within iMessage. Even with its adoption of RCS, Apple has reportedly not budged on the green text bubbles, which are expected to still appear when an RCS message is sent to an iPhone from a different platform.
Android’s “Finding Love With Ziwe” attempts to bring awareness to iPhone users in the U.S. that their bias against green text bubbles could mean that they are “overlooking perfectly eligible Android singles,” according to Rafa Donato, chief creative officer at David Miami. In the video, Fumudoh — who is also a journalist and writer — brings together iPhone users who claim the green text bubbles are a deal breaker with prospective suitors who are Android users to help them confront the root of their bias.
The video will run across YouTube and its Shorts video portal along with Instagram, Facebook and X (formerly Twitter). Android parent Google used Super Bowl LVIII on Sunday to promote its Pixel 8 smartphone, which could give the Valentine’s Day push a boost.
Google has often teased Apple over its lack of support for RCS through cheeky campaigns. The search giant last year created a fake advertisement for an “iPager” device poking fun at Apple for converting iMessages sent to Android to SMS or MMS as part of a “Get the Message” publicity campaign. “Finding Love” is another way for Google to pressure Apple to support RCS. Among other benefits of the standard, notably, is its security over SMS.
”Messaging is at the heart of the dating experience. And like any good relationship, the communication between Android and iPhone users should be seamless, inclusive, and secure,” said Adrienne Lofton, vice president of global consumer marketing for Google, in a statement.
Apple’s adoption of RCS could also help marketers reach consumers more effectively. Among clients of conversational messaging platform Gupshup that are using RCS, some have seen engagement rates about 30-35% higher than for messages sent using SMS, according to Vartika Verma, the company’s senior director of global marketing. Apple’s adoption of RCS, announced in November, followed pressures placed on it to designate iMessage as a “core” service under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act. However, the EU recently decided the tech giant will not be forced to open iMessage to rivals.
