“TBWA/Media Arts Lab was presenting fresh work to its signature client when the Apple executive across the table stopped the proceedings and handed over another idea, saying simply, ‘We like this better,'” Ann-Christine Diaz and Maureen Morrison report for Advertising Age. “The favored ad was created by a rival agency: Apple’s in-house shop.”
“Recounted by a creative who has worked on the brand recently, it’s a scene that would have been unfathomable before the death of Apple’s creative heart and soul, Steve Jobs, roughly two-and-a-half years ago. But today Apple is thinking differently about its approach to advertising and marketing. Very differently,” Diaz and Morrison report. “Amid criticisms that it has failed to innovate, Apple is increasingly taking marketing into its own hands. It’s madly building an internal agency that it’s telling recruits will eventually number 1,000 — the size of Grey Advertising. It’s pitting TBWA/MAL against this internal agency with ‘jump balls’ to mine the best creative ideas, a controversial tactic with outside agencies, let alone an internal one. It’s going after some of adland’s boldest-faced names to staff its in-house shop — in some cases, it’s even poached executives from TBWA/MAL. And, in what once would have been seen as a sacrilegious breach of the Apple-MAL bond, it’s been inviting some of the ad industry’s top shops to pitch on major projects.”
“Once the ad industry’s maverick, the company has struggled to deliver a campaign that lives up to the “Think Different” legacy, marred by missteps like the Olympics 2012 ‘Genius Bar’ ads that quickly got pulled,” Diaz and Morrison report. “In May, Google kicked Apple out of the top spot in BrandZ’s annual ranking of Most Valuable Global brands, a position Apple held for three consecutive years. Apple clearly sees the urgency.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote in March 2013:
Steve Jobs held a three-hour meeting every Wednesday afternoon with his top agency, marketing and communications people to approve each new commercial, print ad, web ad, and billboard. Does Tim Cook? If he does, does he have anything close to Jobs’ sensibilities in this area? Judging from Apple’s marketing since Steve left the building, he does not. Therefore, Cook needs to find a marketing guru to take Steve’s place, conduct these Wednesday meetings, and hold his marketing peoples’ feet to the fire until he/she is extremely satisfied.
And as we followed up with in April of this year:
As Apple CEO, Steve Jobs focused on two things – product design and marketing. He was a genius at both. His talents cannot be replaced with one person. In fact, his talents in either discipline cannot be replaced by one person. Jony Ive and Phil Schiller without Jobs cannot be expected to perform as if Jobs was still working with them.
A team of people – talented people who actually get it and who are all on the same page – is an absolute necessity for Apple’s success, but it creates a problem: Jobs was a single filter. A unified mind. The founder. A group of people simply cannot replicate that. This is not to say that they cannot do great work (we believe Apple does, and will continue, to do great work) just that Apple is fundamentally affected by the loss of Steve Jobs and has to figure out a new way to work.
Related articles:
Apple shifts TV ads production in-house as rift widens with TBWA\Chiat\Day – June 5, 2014
Apple debuts ‘Chicken Fat’ television ad (with video) – June 5, 2014
Emails show Phil Schiller shocked over Apple’s ad agency suggestions – April 8, 2014
Apple’s advertising dilemma aired at $2 billion trial – April 4, 2014
Samsung again mocks Apple customers in iPhone 5 queue via new Galaxy S III ad (with video) – September 19, 2012
Apple pulls ‘Genius’ ad series from its website, YouTube channel – August 22, 2012
Samsung runs print ad attacking Apple’s iPhone 5 in major U.S. newspapers – September 16, 2012
Samsung Super Bowl ad mocks Apple iPhone users – February 6, 2012
Could the Apple-TBWA love affair, one of advertising’s most-storied matchups, survive without Jobs? – January 24, 2011
I think this is because Apple is about to have more products than ever to promote and market and wants to advertise in more timely fashion. Campaign’s can start being formulated much earlier on and leaks controlled even better. The risk is missing great idea’s outside the box. Hopefully original thinking will be prized.
I hope it is also about having enough resources to advertise more than just iPhone or iPad. Apple has plenty of other products and they need to be given airtime while keeping the big picture synchronized…
This could be an amazingly positive move.
Or a disaster.
No one knows the soul of its products like Apple itself. In that sense, taking complete ownership of the marketing could find the essence of what makes these products special oozing out of the advertising as never before.
Or, it could come off like a really large and unfocused company has pulled its attention away from its core strengths of creating great software, hardware and ecosystems to sell people stuff.
All we can do is wait and see.
“…But today Apple is thinking differently about its approach to advertising and marketing. Very differently…”
and you can see how that has worked out with the current, tasteless schmaltz.
The article is worth reading. The headline suggests an imbalanced report, but there is actually more time spent in the latter half to all the executives Apple has brought on board and how the turn-around seems to be moving things in the right direction.
A spokesperson for TBWA said “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make decent adverts, PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”
The spokesperson went on to say “I give them two years before they’re turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake.”
Based on that “Game before the game” video spot for Beats, Apple should definitely get Dr. Dre involved – or who ever was behind it.
Internally or externally or both, this is long overdue.
Maybe they’ll recruit Ken Segal. If anyone gets the house that Steve Jobs built, it’s him.
The House That Jobs Built is being razed brick-by-brick.
Maybe the bricks can be repurposed for use by the rabble, come the revolution
I was thinking the same thing. I read his book “insanely simple” and it was brilliant. Tia is the guy who came up with the “think different” campaign.
May be this is the reason Apple purchased Beat. They needed Marketting (lots of hot air while keeping straight face) people to head the group.
(I used to be an ad guy)
1) Apple is much larger now than when Jobs was around, selling to more products to more diverse audience in more countries. Obviously they would need more ad talent.
2) Most Big Ad agencies make more money on Ad PLACEMENT ( they get a percentage of the billings for TV spots, print space etc) than on Ad production (charges for creating the ad). But Apple is so unusually big, I wonder how they pay their agencies — if they did all ad placements themselves they would save a bundle.
3) it’s obvious that Apple’s TBWA/MAL needed a kick in the butt. We might have got a whole series of Genius guy ads.
Ad Creatives are notoriously hard to handle because Advertising is more art than science, its hard to pin things down and Creative people are often crazy . Just like well known architects often build houses that are funky to win recognition and awards rather than being practical and livable for the client, Ad agencies sometimes do ads that ‘interest them personally’ or to win the next Clio award rather than to max sales increase for the client (often whether the sales increase or not the ad agency still gets fully paid).
3) looking at the ads done by each group:
pencil, dead poets by Apple
powerful, Christmas ‘misunderstood’ by TBWA
I prefer TBWA’s ads. But I think both teams and management are getting an idea of the ‘direction ‘ they want as the ads have similarities.
4) None of the ads have the Power or Drive of the Dre Beats/Apple Brazil world cup ad. The content is somewhat controversial in the USA but I think it’s got a raw energy that still eclipses Apple’s current offerings. The ad was done by Nabil Elderkin who did videos for Kanye west etc, and said he filmed in 8 time zones.
(no current apple ad — and this beats ad is not even a TV ad — has got the kind of press or word of mouth as this Beats ad)
Huffington Post “Beats by Dre just released an epic, star-studded World Cup ad called “The Game Before The Game.”
TIME mag: “This is EPIC. Beats by Dre has one-upped Nike at its own game: amped-up football commercials.”
like to add:
1) there HAS been something wrong with apple’s P.R and marketing the last few years until recently. Apple’s got the underserved image of ‘lost innovation’ etc (in spite of new Mac Pro, 64 bit mobile, fingerprint sensor etc) and the stock had tanked with a ridiculously low P.E (low P.E is an indication of perception — that investors have lost faith in Apple). Both image and stock have recovered to an extent although the stock is still undervalued.
Both head of Apple P.R and head of USA marketing left apple in the same week recently.
2) one more thing about Apple marketing:
currently there is still little COORDINATION in apple marketing, print, web and TV stuff don’t seem to be tied together very well.
For example I would run campaigns where people who just bought an iPhone or iPad are targeted and encouraged to buy Macs (they could be for example sent a mailer: “We hope you are enjoying your new iPhone. Did you know you have one year free tech support? Also we’ll like to tell how you can maximize your computing experience with our eco system… ” and there’s a glorious spiel about the advantages of Mac and the eco system tie in and a DISCOUNT if they bought a Mac in the next 60 days. — just thinking from the top of my head, the ad team could do better but it’s an example and I think they will sell a lot of more macs. )
beats video disconnected.
you can still see it on youtube. Just search for Dre Beats World Cup Ad
Isn’t Phil schiller apples marketing guru.
Maybe Phil don’t know what he’s doing or has bluffed it for years under Steve jobs?
Bold move for apple to bring ads inhouse, but long term it’s a big Strategic mistake.
If their ad agency isn’t creative enough then that agency needs to pull up their socks or they get sacked.
Generally, in-house ad agencies don’t have long shelf lives. I’ve worked at a few.
Resources are actually more plentiful in the outside world. This includes the ability to say your idea is not any good, something very few in-house agencies can deal with.
I agree.
I was creative director of an ad agency in the uk that specialised in multi-lingual ads.
We worked with internal creative teams too in large companies and the people sort of ‘lacked the vision’ as they were too close to the company.
Internal creative teams tend to end up institutionalised and loose the ability to think externally, wheras an separate creative entity sees everything in a different way as they are not employees of the client.
I agree, this ‘experiment’ will fail even if they recruit the best in ad land as the best will get bored and creatively stale within afew years and leave.
Wrong – see my post below to see why.
Really… I’m basing my opinion on a lifetime within the creative business and winner of numerous ad awards and creating successful campaigns for Microsoft etc.
But hey what do I know… :p
Wow, so many wrong headed opinions, starting with the articles author. Apple already has it’s very own ad agency. Hint…it’s called iAd. Could all those supposed hires be just to create a Google killing jugernaught.
Even if Apple is going to do more of it’s marketing inhouse, I seriously doubt they will lose their creativity since their inhouse agency has an extremely numerous supply of outside clients to keep their wits sharp and prevent an overly incestuous relationship with marketing their own wares.
Jeez, I’d have thought all the Apple faithful here would have understood all the above without explanation.
Oh well, that’s why you have me.
ArtimusMacsimus
To further elaborate on the above, what if Apple offers It’s clients Free Advertising for any ads placed in iOS Apps. Free to both clients and developers. How much could that damage Google, MS, Amazon, exc.
So what is more likely, I ask you? The authors opinion or mine. Yeah, I thought so too!!! 😉
The fact that you mention about apple offering free ads just proves you know absolutely nothing about the apple brand, it’s position or value proposition.
Bringing advertising in-house is another example of following the path that led to disaster before: Apple had enough hubris almost thirty years ago to think they could do EVERYTHING better than everyone else. Jobs returned and made the company focus on the few things they could excel at. Now, Apple is again convinced they can do EVERYTHING. Leave advertising to those who know it; just make sure they understand your focus. Unfortunately, without Jobs, Apple isn’t sure what that focus is.