Does your cell phone match your clothes?

According to the advertisement above, spending hundreds of dollars for your new iPhone is not enough to make you stylish. Unless your phone is clad in a case that matches your clothes, your outfit is incomplete. At least that’s what Fergie implies in this Case Mate commercial, where she coordinates each one of her different outfits with a unique case for her phone.

I saw this commercial on TV a few days ago, and I was really amazed by the techniques that advertising experts use to make consumers buy not just what they don’t have, but more of what they already have. First, consumers feel the need to buy a cell phone because everybody around them has one. Then, advertisements of phone accessories promote the idea that phones are quite plain and exposed, and therefore must be decorated and protected by a case. After we have bought a phone and decorated it, one would think that there is nothing more left to buy. This particular commercial, however, makes consumers feel that even if they already own one case, they need to obtain more so that they can match them with their clothes, even though having multiple phone cases is in my opinion wasteful and unnecessary. The message becomes stronger both by linking the product with a celebrity and by presenting phones as accessories while totally undermining their role as a tool for communication.