• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, November 5, 2009

Catch Verizon's new commercial for the Droid that began airing in primetime this week? You couldn't be blamed for at first thinking it was another blockbuster movie trailer, opening with a wing of Stealth fighter jets sweeping out of the clouds and dropping mysterious metal pods that hit rural parts of the country like streaking meteors.

As a pair of aging ranchers tentatively approach one of the still-smoking pods, an aperture opens to reveal the Droid. "What in the world is that?" asks one of cowboys. It ends with a tag line reading "DROP DATE 11 06 09." Subtlety isn't the approach here.

The new Jerry Bruckheimer-style TV spot follows Verizon's initial "iDon't" ad for the Droid, which took direct aim at the iPhone by highlighting things the Motorola smartphone can do that the Apple device can't. Verizon has been tight-lipped about the new phase of the campaign, but the telecom giant has obviously dropped the iPhone attack in favor of an over-the-top attempt to wow viewers in the new ads.

But why drop the head-to-head comparison with the iPhone? If Verizon really thinks it has an iPhone killer on its hands, why not stick with that theme, demonstrating more concretely in ads how the Droid is a better phone. Verizon could turn the Mac v. PC campaign on its head with an extended Droid v. iPhone effort.

Of course, since Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg last month indicated the carrier is still open to having the iPhone on its network, the company may not want to push on the confrontational approach too hard.

But for all its cinematic pretensions, the new ad doesn't tell consumers much about the phone. Presumable, forthcoming executions will show off the Droid's capabilities, following the shock and awe phase of the campaign. But the commercial does reinforce the idea that the Droid is geared toward gadget guys, from the geeky, Lucasfilm-licensed name to its hard-edged design. "Droid is all masculine, all the time," wrote New York Times tech columnist David Pogue, in a strongly positive review of the phone Wednesday.

If Verizon wants to come close to matching AT&T and Apple's iPhone sales, don't they want women to buy the Droid too?