Sign up for afaqs! Newsletters
No more green bubbles or blurry pictures says Meta’s chat platform.
There is nothing more comforting than seeing your family together. But, to the shock of Modern Family’s Mitchell Pritchett (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), he is not part of his family’s group chat because they use Apple and he, the one sticking out because he uses an Android, is not part of it.
It is a scene from Meta-owned WhatsApp’s new ad starring him along with his reel-partner Cameron Tucker (Eric Stonestreet), sister Claire Dunphy (Julie Bowen), and brother-in-law Phil Dunphy (Ty Burrel).
30 seconds long, the ad shows Claire explaining how “blurry photos” and “weird likes” were the reasons they started a group chat without Mitchell.
When non-iPhone users become part of group chats, their messages are sent using MMS or SMS instead of iMessage. It means their messages appear in green bubbles instead of blue bubbles, and the images shared may not be up to the highest quality.
And so, WhatsApp presents itself as the perfect alternative: “Don’t make this family's mistake - switch to WhatsApp for seamless and private messaging across all phones.”
This ad is not the first to revive an old series in the recent past.
A month ago, an ad from Flipkart Grocery saw the return of Maya (Ratna Pathak Shah) and Monisha (Rupali Ganguly) from Sarabhai vs Sarabhai.
The Super Bowl earlier this year saw the return of multiple actors from Suits in ads for T-Mobile and e.l.f. Cosmetics.
Ross (David Schwimmer) and Rachel (Jenniffer Aniston) from F.R.I.E.N.D.S. reunited in an ad for Uber Eats back in February this year.
Back in India, there has been no such communication from WhatsApp on placing itself as the ideal alternative to iPhone because as per media reports, India has one of the if not the highest number of WhatsApp users in the world.