Here’s why:

As a sales story, the Google’s Nexus One was not a success.  It just isn’t selling much (full disclosure: I have one).  And while sales numbers were probably not the primary reason Google built the thing, there’s a lot to learn from the experiment.

Android phones are selling very well.  The current best selling Android device is the Motorola Droid on Verizon (I like the cheaper, keyboard-free Droid Eris and the new HTC Incredible).  The Droid’s ad campaign made the phone cool.  You can pull it out in a bar, and the person next to you will know what it is and hopefully be of the opposite sex and hopefully want to sleep with you.  That’s what good advertising campaigns accomplish … more or less. The Nexus One’s online-only campaign didn’t accomplish this on the same scale as the Droid’s television campaign.

But as advertising campaigns, both have been tremendously nerdy.  They have focused on specs and megapixels and functionality.  The next campaign  needs to focus on Apple’s stronghold: design.  Which brings us to Frank.

Apple customers (at least all the Apple customers I know) think of themselves as design aficionados.  They get hot dreaming about Herman Miller chairs and concrete and steel architecture.  Their phone is an extension of their design sensibilities — like the mock turtlenecks they all wear.  Google needs to exploit this motivator as well.  It’s not just about features.

Picture this: Frank Gehry sitting in his sweeping stainless steel bandshell in Chicago’s Millennium Park.  He says something like this: “Open design is the best design.  A designer must allow others to participate in his sculpture — to play symphonies in his space.  And only by peeling back layers of distraction and excess,  can we can appreciate true elegance.  I’m Frank Gehry, and I use Android.”

photo credit: Sweet One

It’s an attack on all things Apple without being an explicit attack on Apple (unlike the Droid’s “iDon’t” campaign).  And it will give the person next to you at the bar a reason to recognize your phone and want to sleep with you.