The Pomegranate is a mobile phone made for a marketing campaign for the Government of Nova Scotia, a small province in southeastern Canada.
It reads:
It has a website which advertises the product, showing the device with some of the above stated comical features.
Clicking on the release date link revealed that: “Someday you’ll be able to get everything you want in one device. Today you can get everything you want in one place.”
The Pomegranate NS08 Phone was considered an ad for tech product that went beyond limits, which were unlike most products that were advertised.
With technological offerings that were remarkable and perhaps out of a science fiction novel, the phone was actually an attempt to attract interest in Nova Scotia, and establish it as a desirable place to live and do business.
The ad was made to build interest in the province virally through non-traditional means.
The website PomegranatePhone.com was created by Breathe Media, Bristol Group and Egg Films/Hatch in conjunction with Nova Scotia’s 'Come To Life' campaign.
"We needed to find a unique way to get people focused on our province," said a 'Come to Life representative Stacey Jones-Oxner.
"Since there is so much buzz out there around the newest and latest smartphones, we thought this was a good device to use. This is especially true when you consider that the people who are interested in the latest technology are often people involved in business and tend to be key influencers."
The campaign was created for a hefty $175,000 which drew some criticisms.
But still, the site managed to get millions of visitors from 195 countries since its launch on September 2008. This made it an innovative online ad campaign, a successful one, and also considered effective because it delivered exactly what it was designed to do: attracting web traffic to the site and generating tourism interest towards Nova Scotia.
This is because the majority of visitors to the site were also clicking through to the Nova Scotian government website. The campaign said that it was pleased with the results
"The great thing about a viral campaign like this one is that it has a long shelf life!" said Jones-Oxner.
Here are the campaigns, uploaded to YouTube by Daniel Couto who was at the time the Art Director at Bristol Group.