If the video doesn’t work here’s the idea. The commercial plays on the dare of touching their new phone, so enticing that some poor sap jumps over a fence into a yard with 2 menacing looking chained pit bulls to get at one. The guy and the dogs charge full speed at the phone, the dogs are held back by their chains in the nick of time, and the dude can play with the phone.

Theres some todo over this on the internet, folks saying it inaccurately depicts pit bulls, that it is breedism. Verizon has been flooded with demands to pull the ad, which as far as I know, they have not.

I have to say that the add doesn’t really bother me. The dogs look like they’re in good shape and aren’t foaming at the mouth or anything. Chained dogs can be aggressive regardless of breed and I don’t see anything in the commercial that is advocating chaining or fighting dogs, which is all I care about. If they set 2 dogs after each other to fight or race over the phone, or showed a pit bull challenging a person for no reason that would be one thing. But I think the commercial plays into the dare theme of this campaign and is pretty in line and harmless.