Both Tom Hume and James Enck have posted pictures and post about some of O2’s i-mode ads in London. The “i arrive soon” in James’ example seems kinda silly, but the one Tom saw (similar to the one pictured here) is a bit more troubling: “i am faster than wap”. As Tom points out, why would O2 want to associate i-mode with WAP? They’ve gone to great lengths with their Active portal to distance it from WAP, so why call it up with i-mode? What made WAP suck wasn’t just that it was slow.

The feeling I get from both of the ads is that O2 is overestimating the power of the i-mode brand. I doubt a lot of average people in Britain (or whatever smaller set of those O2 is targeting) know what i-mode is. And they still won’t have any idea after seeing this, unless they remember to visit the i-am-i-mode.co.uk site tucked down there in the corner. If they do visit that site, they’re told what i-mode is and why it’s so great — but why not show people? The general impression of mobile data services (no thanks to early WAP efforts) is that they’re clunky, hard to use, and pretty pointless. If i-mode is so much better, make people see that and believe it. Don’t just take their email and mobile number so you can send them a reminder message to come back to the site later.

If i-mode is supposed to be so revolutionary for mobile data, use marketing that expresses that, rather than some oh-they’re-not-showing-anything-so-its-mysterious-and-ergo-must-be-cool-stuff. I also saw this one on the above-mentioned site. Unless they’re planning on having Ian Broudie be the spokesman, isn’t it a few years too late to try to follow the Japan Is Cool wave of things like Muji and Uniqlo?

(Photo from Dan Taylor on Flickr)