Facebook is promoting its Home for Android interface in a new ad that aired in the USA during the Final Four on CBS on Saturday. The “Airplane” commercial by Wieden+Kennedy celebrates Home’s virtue which lies in enabling Facebook users to stay connected with friends anywhere and anytime, without making extra clicks on their mobile devices.   

“A boring business trip gets a lot less boring, when Facebook Home brings a guy’s friends on the journey with him. And all it takes is a few glances to reveal that his life isn’t as conservative as his khakis,” reads the description to the one-minute ad directed by MJZ‘s Fredrik Bond. The film features a young man who has already boarded a plane and is looking through his friends’ news updates on an Android phone while waiting for the take-off. Each of the pictures on the screen comes to life and fills the aircraft’s space with various characters ranging from a nephew with chocolate around his mouth and sunbathing guys to drag queens and jumping cats. A «cirus» melody adds to the cartoonish atmosphere of the film.

The ad has generated a lot of negative buzz on the Facebook Mobile page over the past two days. For instance, one user, James Levy, said: “This truly sucks. Is that supposed to be ironic? How depressing that this dude can’t deal with the people around him and finds ‘happiness’ in the escapist disengagement of a virtual world. Really? Is that the world we want to live in? Then it’s supposed to be ‘cool’ or ‘mischievous’ that he looks one more time against the instructions of the flight attendant?” Comments on the ad’s page on YouTube are disabled, probably in oder to avoid extra criticism.

Facebook Home for Android is set to be available for download starting April 12. The first phone with the in-build Home, HTC One will be available from AT&T on the same day. AT&T explains how to use the new feature in a series of educational spots on its YouTube channel.