“Apple Inc.’s newest TV commercials, showing consumers enjoying its products while an actor reads the company’s corporate philosophy, are a flop compared with earlier ads from the maker of iPhones and iPads,” Peter Burrows reports for Businessweek.
“The company’s latest ad, which began airing June 10, has earned the lowest score of 26 Apple TV ads in the past year, according to Ace Metrix Inc., a consulting firm that analyzes the effectiveness of TV ads through surveys of at least 500 TV viewers,” Burrows reports. “The ad scored 489 on the company’s scoring system, below an industry average of 542 and far below past iconic Apple campaigns that often topped 700.”
Burrows reports, “The change in tack started earlier this year, with similar ads that highlighted the iPhone’s status as a popular camera and music player. These ads, which show contemplative montages of people using iPhones in their daily rounds, also fared poorly by Apple’s standards on Ace Metrix’s scale, with scores of 560 and 537, respectively.”
“Apple’s new ad, dubbed ‘Designed by Apple in California,’ scored a 528 on ‘Information,’ versus an hardware-industry average of 603,” Burrows reports. “A recent ad for Samsung’s new Galaxy S4 phone that showed features such as the ability to answer a call without touching the screen scored a 757 by that same measure.”
MacDailyNews Take: The reason why the Apple ads in question scored low on the “Information” metric is because they are not informational ads.
Shocking, we know.
Burrows reports, “Edward Boches, a professor of advertising at Boston University. said the final seconds of the ad may strike some viewers as inappropriately political. The words ‘Designed by Apple in California’ appear as the voice says, ‘This is our signature, and it means everything.’ ‘Is this a subtle way of saying we’re not a Korean company? That’s not the way a leader like Apple should talk,’ said Boches, who also described himself as a ‘huge fan’ of Apple.”
MacDailyNews Note: UPDATE: June 28, 2013 @ 2:05pm EDT: This report has been called into question due to the fact that is has since been revealed that Ace Metrix counts Samsung among it’s clients. Read more:
Businessweek says Apple’s TV Ads ‘flop’ based on survey from Ace Metrix – which counts Samsung as a client – June 28, 2013
Read more in the full article – Think Before You Click™ – here.
MacDailyNews Take: It also doesn’t help that, in America, a California riddled with high costs, taxes, heavy traffic, chronic budgetary crises, a public education system crying for reform, a general pervasive dysfunction, etc., may also not be considered the booming success story it once was.
For those of us who have lived in California and since fled, the words “Designed by Apple in California” are invariably followed by the thought, “better you than me.”
Why exclude 49 other states when you can easily include them? Perhaps Apple should say “Designed by Apple in the USA” instead? Doing so would broaden the appeal to the whole country.
