Verizon Droid Commercial Comes to Life at Mall

I brought my wife to the mall over the weekend to grab a few items and ran across an interesting Verizon promo. Stownstown Galleria in San Francisco has a handful of empty storefronts. Verizon turned one of them into a giant interactive billboard for the holidays. There are a bunch of images and slogans strewn about, but the really cool part of it is a touchscreen game that lets you battle with the snowman robot featured in Verizon’s holiday commercials.

(Video muted per wife’s request…)

While the ad was interesting to me, nobody else stopped by. It seems people would much rather play with gadgets that they can actually take home, such as those displayed a few doors down at the Apple store. I saw several people buying MacBooks and iPads at this quick-checkout table at the Apple store. I’m not sure when Apple started selling its high-end items in the manner, but the quick checkout table used to be reserved for iPods during the holidays. I guess more consumers know what they want in their high-end gadgets and don’t mind dropping up to $2,349 (15″ MacBook Pro) without speaking to a salesperson first.

There were also quite a few people checking out devices upstairs at a Verizon retailer’s kiosk. While they did have several Droid devices on display, the most popular item at the booth seemed to be the Apple iPad, which Verizon is bundling with the Novatel MiFi. They didn’t have an iPad on display, but people were asking about the Apples on the side of the kiosk.Verizon’s kiosk had some Apple iPad branding where Droid promos used to reside. The promo probably end up reminding quite a few people to check out the iPhone down at the Apple store before finalizing their Droid purchases.

If Verizon wanted to make a real Droid push for the holidays (at least at this mall), they should have put together a temporary Droid store/showcase  instead of just renting the window space. If and when Verizon gets the iPhone, I wonder how much of its marketing efforts will shift from Android to iOS.