“It’s an interesting phenomenon — Apple runs an ad and the internet lights up with comment and commentary,” Ken Segall blogs eponymously. “The Apple story of the week is the new HomePod ad. Four minutes in length, I’m not sure you can call it an ad, but it’s out there and getting mostly positive reactions. Directed by Spike Jonze, psychedelic expanding sets, cool music, emotional dance … what’s not to like?”
“It’s not that I don’t like it. I think it’s beautifully produced, like all Apple ads. But it does make me feel like I’ve been here before,” Segall writes. “Or, more accurately, that I’ve been here many times before. Like I’m stuck in an infinite loop of Apple dancing ads.”
“I’m not sick of the dance idea because I’m anti-dance. I’m sick of it because I’m pro-creativity — and what I’ve loved about Apple advertising throughout history is its ability to shake things up, and go where it hasn’t gone before,” Segall writes. “In my opinion, a company like Apple can take two approaches to advertising. It can start thinking about what works for the mainstream audience — like dancing and celebrities (who are also frequently summoned by Apple these days) — or it can use its mass-popularity to take the same risks today as it did when it was the underdog. The latter is the Apple that captured so many hearts.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Steve Jobs is dead.
That much is painfully obvious.
As everything from ads to execution (or lack thereof) to product lines attest, coasting along under a caretaker CEO is what Apple is currently. Brilliance is still possible (see iPhone X), but so are many mistakes and much reliance on what worked before.
You want to produce an Apple commercial? Pitch ’em some dancing!
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 2014:
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.
SEE ALSO:
Apple debuts new HomePod short film directed by Spike Jonze and starring FKA twigs – March 6, 2018