What a difference a few decades make.
During the 1985 Super Bowl broadcast, Apple followed up its previous—and widely acclaimed—Super Bowl commercial, 1984, with a little disaster called Lemmings.
Designed to seduce business customers with “The Macintosh Office,” it actually insulted its intended target by depicting them as, uh … Lemmings.
34 years later, Apple is again making its pitch to business. This time, it’s a bit more down to earth—and infinitely more convincing.
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If there was a Beginner’s Guide To Corporate Screwups, surely it would explore the tried-and-true ways for companies to shoot themselves in the foot.
Release buggy software. Fail to protect customer data. Run a bad ad. See your CEO arrested. So many possibilities!
But AirPower is not your stereotypical screwup. It’s something far grander. Never in history has Apple announced a product, gone silent about it for 18 months, and then killed it before it ever shipped.
At least it proves that Apple can be a true innovator in the area of self-immolation.
“Freedom to fail” is actually a liberating thing, essential to the Apple culture. In an internal meeting, I once heard Steve Jobs defend Apple’s large cash reserve by saying, “It gives us the freedom to jump as high as we want. If we fail, we will always have solid ground beneath our feet.”
Unfortunately, AirPower isn’t the “liberating” kind of failure. It’s just shocking and sad.
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Zinger! Bang! Take that, Android!
Apple ran a witty (and wordy) billboard outside the CES Show in Vegas this week, and it became a news story in itself.
If you’re relatively new to Apple, this sudden burst of verbosity must have come as a shock. You might have thought that the non-headline “iPhone XR” was as clever as Apple gets in a billboard.
Is this a whole new Apple? Or just a temporary lapse of humdrum?
Actually, it’s an echo of an earlier Apple, when headlines would both amuse and inform.
Steve Jobs’ goal was never just to sell a product. It was to build a stronger brand, and headlines were a big part of that.Continue reading…
Steve Jobs once quoted Picasso: “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.”
True that. Innovative thinkers invent, observe and assimilate. They merge the old and new to create something fresh.
Apparently, the good and great artists were hard at work on Apple’s latest ad, Color Flood. I quite enjoyed it. But even as I watched it for the first time, I was visited by the Ghosts of Advertising Past.Continue reading…
Ben Franklin said that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. Until last week, I would have added “Jony Ive product videos” to that list.
Apple had a formula for these videos and it wasn’t about to budge—beauty shots and engineering animations, accompanied by Jony’s intelligently philosophical voice.
It’s gone on for so many years, I’ve actually lost count.
It’s not like the videos didn’t work. Apple sales certainly never suffered. It’s just felt odd that a company that puts creativity front and center would become so formulaic.
But all that changed last week when Apple unveiled two new videos—for MacBook Air and iPad Pro—and we didn’t hear a peep from Jony. I’m still recovering from the shock.
Thank the marketing gods for giving Apple a much-deserved kick in the butt. Continue reading…
Blue robotic eye, vertical, isolated