“Apple began building its own team of ad men and women last year, amid frustration with TBWA\Media Arts Labs, a unit of TBWA\Chiat\Day, the agency that was responsible for the 1984 and Think Different commercials,” Peter Burrows reports for Bloomberg. “So far, ads made by the in-house team have received a cooler reception from viewers on average than those made by the agency. Ace Metrix gathers data from hundreds of TV watchers to discern how persuasive and entertaining an ad is.”
“There’s a reason big corporations hire advertising agencies, rather than try to put together a bench of their own Don Drapers,” Burrows reports. “Going outside ensures that companies don’t get too caught up in their own views of themselves, says Rob Siltanen, an advertising consultant who wrote the ‘Here’s to the crazy ones’ copy for Apple’s iconic 1997 campaign after Steve Jobs returned to the company.”
“South Korea’s Samsung Electronics has been happy to let 72andsunny, a Los Angeles advertising firm, handle its creative. The partnership is paying off. A recent ad for the Galaxy S5, which shows the water-proof device being used to film kids in a sprinkler, scored a 739. That’s the second Galaxy ad to top 700. The best score any Apple ad has ever gotten was 696 for a 2010 commercial for its FaceTime videoconferencing service,” Burrows reports. “The highest-scoring ad from the Apple team is its most recent. The spot highlights how iPhone owners can use the device to exercise, set to the strains of an old-timey song called “Chicken Fat.” It earned a score of 611 from Ace Metrix.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote well over a year ago 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 building 1,000-person internal advertising agency – June 10, 2014
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
Sad Men…
More accurate headline: “Some Apple ads perform better than others.”
Also, apple’s in-house ads are performing poorly compared to those from outside ad agency
It looks like a wash to me.
Or another headline might be:
New team of ad execs who have no history together underperform against a decades old award winning ad team.
Let’s wait until we see the iPhone 6 and iWatch campaigns. Then we can safely render a verdict on Apple’s marketing direction.
Amen! The new ads are BAD. Chicken Fat? Come on.
I used to love watching Apple’s ads. Now I switch the channel when their ads come on.
You have to consider too who these ads are made for. Probably not the choir but they should be entertaining and informative for all.
Take a look at the chart. The Chicken Fat ad is the best performing ad that Apple is responsible for. That said, I agree that internal agencies are sometimes too close to the company’s daily workings to have the right perspective.
Ah once again I find myself well out of the populous mainstream. That ad I find unbearable- because of that music. I immediately switch channels or mute the audio.
Surprise surprise… Leave the advertising to the professionals apple.
I give it 6 months max before apple outsourcing all their ads to Chiat day again.
Perhaps some type of give and take between the two – internal and external? The performance of the external ad guys has not been that great for Apple over the past five years or so. There have been a couple of exceptions on the upside, but mostly mediocre and forgettable fare. Why not maintain an internal team within Apple to play devil’s advocate and, at the very least, force the ad companies to bring their “A” game? Steve Jobs used to serve in that role, but in the post-SJ world it takes a team.
“I give it 6 months max before apple outsourcing all their ads to Chiat day again.”
There’s a bit of an echo in here …
“I give them two years before they’re turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake”
Here’s an article from 2001 explaining why Apple Stores might not be such a good idea. The reasons given might have sounded plausible at the time, but history has proved the experts wrong, just like those who subsequently offered plausible theories about why the iPhone and then the iPad would never catch on. http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2001-05-20/commentary-sorry-steve-heres-why-apple-stores-wont-work
Like it or not the most popular adverts are also the worst ones from a technical or classy viewpoint. Unlike the likes of Samsung Apple is expected to be classy not popularist. The problem at the moment is that they are for the most part, though often visually impressive have been to the viewer neither popularist, classy or memorable sadly. The fact that chicken fat is the highest scorer shows that annoying often grabs the attention more than quality. That’s where SJ was such a good judge and where Apple misses him probably the most.
Two thoughts…
First, I have been pushing for years for Apple to design its iOS devices to be at least water resistant. Samsung has started to do so, and it appears to be resonating with the general public. Listen to me, Apple!!
Second, while it is true that there may be some benefits to going outside a company for advertising support, the primary issue for Rob Siltanen and every other “advertising consultant” is money. They want Apple’s money.
Apple ads used to be incredibly cool and reflective of the company. They launched the careers of several musical artists. You knew Steve Jobs approved. Non- Apple fanatics I know, however, love the chicken fat commercial. They are older consumers. I dread the day Dre provides the musical accompaniment. Apple’s still got an opportunity to redeem itself, though- both Samsung and Microsoft’s ads are among the most excruciatingly annoying ever done.
I find it odd that Amazon’s advertisements seem more like the Steve Jobs commercials than do the current Apple ads. Hummm…
meh.
if the Samsung Galaxy Ad is so great why is the iPhone outselling it by leaps and bounds even in it’s first launch month?
some indicators (like Kantor Worldpanel) show the old 5C (the so called Apple ‘flop’) although selling less than the newly launched Galaxy S5 in the U.S is outselling it worldwide and the iPhone 5S is outselling it practically everywhere.
So if the Galaxy MARKETING is BETTER yet the (old) iPhone 5S, 5Cis is outselling it than it can only mean the iPhone as a PRODUCT is so much better ! (lol).
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But in reality I also think beside’s Apple product being better Apple’s advertising is also better.
Samsung spends 4 times more money than Apple on advertising: there’s a Big incentive for Ad agencies to convince Samsung to KEEP SPENDING. Samsung executives were also grilled and lambasted the in the last two financial quarterly reports (where profits failed expectations) for spending too much on advertising by shareholders (and hostile Samsung family members who ran other divisions than Electronics). I bet you all these announcements by Ace Metrix plus Samsung execs saying Apple is worried about Samsung advertising in their recent patent trial is the powerful electronics division doing their typical convoluted shenanigans to explain away to shareholders the ‘success’ of their monstrous ad spend.
(BTW think about it: in the trial Samsung their big argument was that customers DID NOT buy their products because of their features (which they stole from apple) but because their ads are better. Get that? Samsung said their products suck but they managed to trick their idiot customers by great Advertising!! )
My shenanigans theory B.S? Look at J.D powers giving the top spot to best customer satisfaction last year to the Galaxy Tab and relegating iPad behind it by skewing PRICE category (heavily weighting it. The iPad had soundly beaten it in the four remaining categories ). Studies can be manipulated in all kinds of ways….
Look at Ace Metrix’s categories it measures :
Desire
Relevance
Information
Attention
Change
Likeability
Suppose an Apple Ad is NOT trying to CHANGE somebody but Maintain it : i.e to keep apple users snug and warm reminding them how great the eco system is is, than the apple ad will score low.
ALSO Apple ads work in TANDEM (or in a group rather) than one Ad so the effect might be CUMULATIVE and you can’t judge it by a single ad in isolation (what I’m saying : one ad is remind people why they are with apple, another is the great apps, another is go out and buy…. ) so each ad BY ITSELF might score low but the campaign as a whole is great.
Samung’s Ad Campaign is a DISCORDANT MESS.
one ad is beating up on Apple users ( Apple’s customers lining up for phone launch), others poke fun at iPad features, other’s are touch fee lie (trying to copy Apple) etc. The Campaign lose’s it’s impact because each ads looks like its from a DIFFERENT company, there’s no over arching ‘Samsung look’ to the ads to tie them together. That’s much weaker than Apple where Apple has a mostly consistent ‘look’ (even the colours used etc).
look at their ‘wonderful’ Galaxy S4 bollywood launch (is it consistent, work with their ads? )
my final thoughts : are all apple ads GREAT? No (I’ve criticized some apple ads myself in posts here) , but as a consistent campaign I believe it’s much better than Samsungs. And as apple makes a heck a lot more profit than Samsung in phones while spending a FRACTION (one quarter ) in ads proves that everything apple is doing (products , advertising) is working.
—
I used to be an ad pro.
Btw
in previous posts i actually said I liked the outside ad agencies ad a bit more (like ‘gigantic’ aka ‘Powerful’) than it’s in house ads but I think the in house agency might keep the outside agencies on their toes.
Note : The GENIUS ads were done by TBWA. (most hated them and they were taken off air quickly).
if Apple didn’t do their own ads maybe we’ll be getting more Genius type ads?
Also in the released Samsung patent trial emails from outside agency had the execs writing to the effect (I’m paraphrasing from memory) that Apple needed more advertising as it was in a crisis similar to around 1996 (before Jobs) which made Schiller blow up, his reply was that the agency had no clue that apple was huge now with giant revenues etc. The agencies cluelessness was the thing that accelerated the drift for apple to do in house ads.
God, can this post be any longer?
Are you BLIND?
Do you have NO CHOICE?
if you think it’s long DON’T READ? is that HARD?
or are you BRAIN DEAD?
—–
seriously from long years of posting I end up in a LONG THREAD because people don’t get it and keep having to amplify in further posts.
Like I said EYEBALLS to see the length and HALF A BRAIN for you to DECIDE TO READ OR NOT.
or is this TOO SHORT FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND?
“God, can this post be any longer?”
@Rob
DID YOU ADD ANYTHING TO THE DISCUSSION FOR OTHERS ABOUT APPLE ADS?
nope.
Baloney.
Apple selling like hotcakes is indicative of successful marketing. The shysters of WS would want you to believe that the ad agencies have added value. Bunch of hooey. In fact having an external ad agency exposes apple to more theft from their competitors. Aplle should take everything in-house. There is as much talent in apple and elsewhere other than the shysters and their friends.
You truly believe this? Sad. Apple is NOT good at everything no even close
go TROLL somewhere else idiot.
samsung astro turfing dollars at work?
This is all so subjective. Personally, I love all of Apple’s latest ads.