Television advertising fascinates me. Stripped of the gloss, it’s basically street hawkers screaming for your attention while you pass through a busy market on your way to somewhere more interesting.

They’re rarely effective and often irritating, which is why an advertisement telling me that a smartphone should be faster than a “racehorse duct-taped to a scud missile” is one I take notice of.

This inspired lunacy is lifted from Verizon’s ad for the Android-powered Droid smartphone, and is worth watching before we continue. Go on, I’ll wait.

Welcome back. Now that we’re on the same Fight Club-inspired page, I think the question we’re all dying to have answered is “Should a phone be pretty. Should it be a tiara-wearing, digitally clueless, beauty-pageant queen?” After all, wouldn’t you rather have a phone that “rips through the web like a circular saw through a ripe banana”?

I like this advert. I like it for all of the above lines, and the better ones that are only implied. The real message of Verizon’s Droid advert is that Android is bloody ugly and you shouldn’t worry about that because it goes whoosh. But then so does Caster Semenya, and I wouldn’t invite her anywhere near my trousers either.

To that end, Verizon buries the Droid beneath a big, thick coat of cool. In between the scene bleeds, fuzzy transitions and burning film you’re more likely to catch sight of Joanna Lumley stealing 10p from a Gurkha than the actual phone.

And it’s this which truly fascinates me about ads. They’re built on the perception of perception. An advert is tacit admission of how the company perceives itself, and, in turn, how it wants to be perceived. They’re a psychiatrist’s couch on a Las Vegas show floor. Look at Apple’s posturing (cool kids buy cool things and we’re cool – look, white earphones and stuff) and Microsoft’s crrrraziness (we’re not boring, honest). Which leads me to believe that despite all the millions on display in that Droid ad, Verizon’s not entirely convinced.

Presumably, the “tiara-wearing, digitally clueless, beauty-pageant queen” is the iPhone. Put aside, for a minute, the unfortunate truth that it’s none of these, and we’re left with the issue that Verizon’s trying to distance its product on the issue of speed… which would work if that S in 3GS stood for slow. Alas, it doesn’t, though there’s every possibility that the D in Droid stands for dim on this evidence.

On the other hand, the iPhone can’t multitask, the battery’s rubbish and it’s expensive. The Palm Pre campaign tried to exploit the first flaw with limited success. Battery life is so boring that even Megan Fox picking a dirty mag off the floor couldn’t sex it up, which leaves price. The Droid is $200 after a rebate, as is the iPhone. Bugger.

All this leaves an advert, which when stripped to its barebones actually says that the Droid is uglier than an iPhone, and… erm… well, that’s it. Funnily enough, it appears that by criticising the iPhone for placing style before substance, Verizon’s done exactly that.