Dumbphones and brands—how Mattel and other marketers are capitalizing on the trend

This is the year of the dumbphone and brands are taking notice. With the upcoming election making social media particularly divisive and toxic, and people interested in spending more time offline, phone makers and other brands are backing their own dumbphones. Dumbphones can best be thought of as the antithesis of smartphones. They’re purposefully hamstrung to perform nothing more than a handful of tasks suboptimally. If TikTok is a pain to use on a dumbphone—if it’s usable at all—people may be more likely to focus on other tasks. PepsiCo recently said it would give a Flamin’ Hot-themed flip phone to the winner of a social media contest. While that device comes with a year of service, it’s marketed as a way to order Flamin’ Hot snacks, not to necessarily replace one’s primary phone. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Gabby Windey (@gabby.windey) NextGen Marketing Summit Join us for a crash course on Gen Z, DTC marketing and the creator economy Register today Human Mobile Devices (HMD), the maker of Nokia phones, has released two old-fashioned branded flip phones that are pitted against the portable computer-like smartphones most people carry. In August, it announced a Barbie flip phone that’s just as pink as one might imagine. Hundreds of thousands of the $129 devices sold out ahead of their Oct. 1 U.S. release. In April, HMD revealed the (much greener) Heineken Boring Phone, designed to discourage scrolling and encourage socializing at the bar. Created in partnership with fashion brand Bodega, Heineken gave away 5,000 Boring Phones. Also read: Pepsi’s market share struggle and comeback plans Gen Zers are conflicted about how easy it is to fall down a content rabbit hole on their smartphones, according to research from Day One Agency and the USC Annenberg Center for Public Relations. They “expressed concerns about the amount of time they spend in front of screens and sought to reevaluate their relationships with their go-to apps,” according to the study, which was published last year. Consumers seeking a break from their doom-scrolling habits are interested in dumbphones as a means to an end, said James Roberts, a marketing professor at Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business. Roberts is currently working on research that shows people who cut back on social media report lower levels of stress and anxiety. While dumbphones promise to wean people off social media, Roberts speculated that interest in retro phones will remain high only until a better solution comes along, as people are too collectively reliant on smartphones to abandon them. “As a society, we’ve jumped both feet into the beauty of smartphones,” Roberts said. “So we can quit, but what about your friends and colleagues you have to interact with that haven’t bought in?” HMD marketed both of its branded phones as a companion device to a person’s primary phone, said Lars Silberbauer, chief marketing officer of HMD. By having both phones on hand, or bringing only their dumb device to an event where they may not need a phone, people can cut down on their TikTok time without sacrificing modern luxuries. Ironically, both product announcements did especially well on social media, thanks to their novel appearances, Silberbauer said. He added that social is a key media channel for dumbphones because that’s where brands can find people who want to spend less time online. “We try to put a lot of humor into it,” Silberbauer said. “We don’t want to be telling people off … we want to say ‘we know this might be a weird challenge.’” Most telecommunications companies have yet to embrace the dumbphone trend, but some have embraced its sentiment. In July, USCellular ran a campaign discouraging people from spending too much time on their phones and enlisted Alanis Morissette to acknowledge the irony of the messaging. The spot plugs a feature introduced last year called “US Mode” that according to the company allows users to customize a range of settings such as putting time limits on social media apps, disabling non-human push notifications, eliminating app notifications and enabling preset quiet times. The campaign generated nearly 2 billion impressions across social and earned media since its launch on July 23. Many of those views came from Instagram, according to Marisa Perazzelli, planning director at The Martin Agency, which created the campaign. “Phone usage these days, unfortunately, is as ubiquitous as breathing air,” Perazzelli said. “We all know we really can’t be off of them entirely, but balance is key. USCellular aims to be a wireless brand that acknowledges this and gains consumer and customer trust along the way.” Read more about USCellular’s ‘US Mode’ campaign The campaign acknowledges the irony that applies to branded dumbphones as well. By offering their own dumbphones, Mattel and Heineken encouraged consumers to spend less time on one of their key marketing channels. But they’re not entirely hurting themselves by doing so, Silberbauer said. “The touch point Barbie is getting with this every time you use the phone, whether you just play with it or actually use it, is that you’re stepping into the Barbie world,” he said. “That is the recurrent way you’re interacting with that brand.” He added that HMD and its brand partners still rely on word of mouth to spread outside of social media. HMD also has the benefit of needing to sell dumbphones to each consumer only once. What’s next in minimalist technology Tech companies have recognized how people yearn for a simpler time with a simpler phone. Relying largely on earned media, a handful of gadgets have gotten cult followings for promising to reduce screen time. The Light Phone 2 is the quintessential dumbphone, barely able to handle more than providing directions and playing a handful of songs. Since Brooklyn, New York-based startup The Light Phone released the device in 2019, it’s made numerous headlines in tech publications and gained a small but loyal Instagram following. It’s currently developing prototypes of the Light Phone 3. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Light Phone ✨ (@thelightphone) The same can be said of the Boox Palma—part e-reader and part semi-smartphone. The gadget from Chinese developer Onyx International has made the rounds among tech outlets and creators as influential as Marques Brownlee. It’s garnered a cult following due to its ability to run apps such as YouTube in a pinch but on a grainy, black-and-white screen that’s best suited for reading books. Other gadgets offer to hit smartphones with dumb technology. A small magnetic device called Brick pairs with iPhones and blocks apps of a user’s choosing. To unblock them, the user must physically tap their phone against the Brick, which is usually kept in a separate location. Brick, also ironically, has a decent Instagram presence, where it markets itself to almost 30,000 followers. To crowdsource the perfect dumbphone, HMD has invited the public to join it on a six-month innovation project it calls the Better Phone Project. Interested participants can contribute feedback on HMD’s website and register for events such as seminars on the effects of social media and smartphone usage. “The issues that we see are impacting older and younger people,” Silberbauer said. “We as humans received technology that we were not really mature enough to use … this will not stop until we have different things that change our behavior.” Sign up for Ad Age newsletters From influencer marketing to agencies, get the latest news and analysis delivered to your inbox Click here

Dumbphones and brands—how Mattel and other marketers are capitalizing on the trend

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