Cinema, television and fashion magazines will carry advertisements promoting the Xelibri range, to be launched first in Hong Kong and Singapore, then China in July and other Asian markets later. The phones do not have games, email or picture messaging functions, and allow users to simply make calls or use text messages. Xelibri vice-president of marketing, Chad Ellis, said he expected Asian consumers to choose Xelibri as their second phone, using a handset with all the functions they liked during the day, and the Xelibri for its unique appearance after hours. Both the phones and the campaign treat Xelibri as a fashion brand; the phones themselves will be sold in department stores and fashion boutiques as well as electronics shops, and will be released as themed "collections".
The first collection, 'Space on Earth' is intended to stir memories of Star Trek, Star Wars and Lost in Space. "It's designed to be a fashion accessory, to be something you fall in love with and show off, like a handbag or great pair of sunglasses," Ellis said. "Others like Nokia advertise their phones as a fashion accessory ... but we're the first company to say let's really design them as fashion accessories. It's very much like what Swatch did to the watch market."
The ad campaign is identical to that used for Xelibri in Europe. The TVC features a world in which everybody looks the same, except one man who breaks the 'No dancing' law and sparks a city-wide manhunt.
Iain Newton, a strategist at Mother said the creative was "an ironic take on the future of the future".
He said: "Mobile phone companies often look at the future, and keep telling you that their technology is tomorrow's technology, but fashion is all about now, so we wanted to have fun with what the future could look like and create something that's humorous and completely ridiculous," he said.