VOICES: Suzanne Pope – Apple Has Gone Bad

Posted by admin on July 30th, 2012

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Suzanne is a leading figure in the Toronto advertising scene. She founded the free creative resource, Ad Teachings, and offers her expertise as a Freelance Copywriter and Creative Director. Here, she lends her opinion on the newest spots from Apple.

Steve Jobs was a man who understood advertising, and who had strong opinions about how Apple’s ads should look and feel. He wanted his ads to be like his products and so, under his tenure, Apple spent a quarter-century producing some of the world’s smartest, simplest and most intelligent advertising.

But now Steve Jobs is gone, and someone else is in charge. And that someone has approved a campaign that, seriously, looks like something Walmart or Future Shop would have done. It’s hokey, earnest, unfunny and contrived, and its dialogue reads as if it was copied and pasted from the brief. Yes, all the selling messages are in there, but the whole thing constitutes a deep violation of the brand. I imagine the brand team is smugly satisfied that they’re finally getting to do ads their way, and I’m sure the creatives are off somewhere licking their wounds.

The rest of this dreadful campaign is on view at YouTube.

I try to stay fairly positive in this blog because there’s quite enough negativity in our industry (and, God knows, I’ve done some spectacularly bad ads myself). But I must call particular attention to this object lesson, because I cannot recall another brand that has moved so quickly from producing great ads to making ads that are just plain embarrassing.

~What are your thoughts?
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