Hasta La Creative!

Android wants to be with you. Everywhere. All the time. Is that so wrong?

The Google-developed platform doubles down on the “togetherness” theme in work touting its new Android 5.0 Lollipop OS. That system runs across mobile, wearables, TVs and a range of other devices, including the Nexus 6 smartphone (built by Motorola) and Nexus 9 tablet (from HTC), both of which dropped this week amid much fanfare.

“Be together. Not the same” is Android’s new tagline, introduced in a trio of 30-second animated spots on Sunday during the season premiere of AMC’s The Walking Dead. The South Park-y visuals are strictly G-rated and give the ads, which teased the Nexus 6 and 9 handsets a few days before their Wednesday release, a distinctive flair.

Those clips were followed by a pair of minute-long spots that expand the campaign’s message by emphasizing the “And” in Android. One mixes animation with live-action shots of diverse folks enjoying life and interacting in positive ways with technology (backed by the inspired musical choice of Andrew W.K.’s anthemic “Party Hard”).

The second spot ditches the animation but really lays out Google’s vision. A voiceover begins: “Remember back in school, when you either invited the new kid over to your table, or you didn’t? If you did, that was a cool move. That was an AND move. ‘And moves’ take guts, but they can mean everything.”

Footage of the Wright Brothers and Martin Luther King Jr. follows, stressing how inclusiveness combined with independent thought drives innovation and change. “Everyone doing the same thing won’t move us forward. Everyone doing their own thing, together, can.”

“As you switch from one screen to another, the experience should feel the same. So Lollipop has a consistent design across devices,” writes Sundar Pichai, svp of Android, Chrome and Apps, on Google’s blog. “Now, content responds to your touch, or even your voice, in more intuitive ways, and transitions between tasks are more fluid.”

Overall, the campaign, devised by Google Creative Lab, presents an appealing tech-topian notion that’s on point for our hyper-connected times. Still, there’s a nagging Big Brother vibe just beneath the surface. Isn’t Google ubiquitous enough already? When we’re “being together” with others, must a piece of software participate in every interaction?