Ah, cross-promotion. Surely one of the finest institutions of the modern marketing machine. In Verizon’s latest bit of salesmanship, they’ve ditched the football fans and tae-bo urbanites for an American icon all the way from the UK: Simon Cowell. The cellular carrier employed the laser-tongued musical personality in a commercial you’ll likely be seeing a lot of in the next few weeks, promoting both the DROID Bionic and Fox’s new talent show X-Factor.

In the latest DROID Bionic commercial, the famous judge lays the smack-down on some generic-looking smartphones with his signature lack of tact. “Rubbish!” he cries. “Useless!” he moans. Until, of course, he comes across the DROID Bionic, for which he’s beaming smiling smirking in a not entirely critical way. Even for a device we called “the best all around choice to date“, it’s hard to see such brazen disregard for the safety of innocent hardware.

The beach-goers sell it for me, though. They find a pile of discarded, nameless phones in the sand and are just about to pick them up, when Cowell, like the ancient god out of the machine, commands them from on high to abandon such worthless trash. Even the dog obeys. That’s real power, folks – even a $5 million recording contract can’t buy that.

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