Apple Gets Backlash on New Creative

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This morning, an apology from Apple.

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The company sang in a statement to ad age.

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It missed the mark after widespread backlash for its ad,

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promoting the latest iPad Pro.

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The ad titled "Crushed" released Tuesday

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shows a press crushing symbols of the arts and creativity.

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♪ Your tense snore ♪

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♪ So I love all the love of all the great ♪

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♪ All the things you do ♪

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♪ If the only reason to build my world around ♪

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Compressing into the new iPad Pro.

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The most powerful iPad ever is also the thinnest card.

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The online backlash bubbling throughout the week,

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critics seeing it as a metaphor for what tech companies do

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to the arts, to artists, musicians, and creators.

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Even celebrities weighing in, Hugh Grant posting the destruction

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of the human experience, courtesy of Silicon Valley.

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Apple saying, "Our goal is to always celebrate

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"the myriad of ways users express themselves

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"and bring their ideas to life through iPad."

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We missed the mark with this video and we're so--

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Did you catch the internet outrage around the Apple ad

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that just came out?

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Yes, yes.

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I did see it.

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I saw some takes on it that I really agreed with.

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On one hand, there was lots of, I think, thoughtful criticism.

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There was people who were remixing the ad

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and being like, "Oh, it would have been better if it was this way

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"and I tend to do it backwards or something."

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Yeah, and like, sure, that was an improvement.

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It was cool.

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I understand, I guess, why some people were bothered by it.

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Personally, I was like, the ad didn't resonate with me a bunch,

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but I also wasn't pissed off about it or anything.

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It didn't personally offend me like it seemed like it did other people.

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But my favorite take of all was after Apple had to come out

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and apologize because people were so mad about the ad.

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I saw that if you look on the mainstream media covering this,

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like People Magazine did an Instagram story

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that was like Apple apologizes for insensitive ad.

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Like the normal people, like the non-chronically online people

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who comment on it through stuff were like,

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"Everyone needs to get a grip."

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Like, you're telling me that people are that mad

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about a stupid 15-second commercial

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that they're forcing Apple to apologize for it.

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And I thought it was interesting to think about the difference

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between people who live online because their work's online

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and they're just critiquing everything online all the time,

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versus someone who pokes their head into the online world once a day

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and is like, "What the hell is going on here?

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Get a life, people."

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Stop trying to control and cook.

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Like, no one cares.

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And I just thought that was a really funny, like grounding take

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because I was scrolling through all the takes yesterday

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and then I realized I'm like, "Oh yeah, this is like the most insignificant."

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And like, I shouldn't care about this.

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Yeah, I just lost three minutes of my life kind of a thing.

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Yeah, for those that don't know,

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the commercial is called Crush and it's featuring

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it's basically the product that it's showcasing is the new iPad Pro

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that is effectively, you know, thinner and flatter than ever before.

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And so what the marketing team here did or the agency or whatever

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is pack a bunch of art and music and pop culture

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and all of these symbols into this like crushing device

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that basically crushes these objects into what is effectively an iPad

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on the other end of that like compression, which, you know,

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it kind of makes sense like that.

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I can understand the story that we're bringing all of this

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into a very flat kind of surface.

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But I think people have responded to the visual of pianos exploding

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and you know, art like busts kind of exploding

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and all of the colors and paint being sprawled everywhere

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is almost like anti-apples ethos of celebrating the arts

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and embracing music and all of that.

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Sure.

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So it felt like the offense, which to your point is like,

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come on people, like big deal, get over it.

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There's more important things happening than this in the world.

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But the offense almost felt like a reaction to how

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unappled the ad was or against apples, like brand principles.

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And so, you know, man, like in business, I think it's just slow

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Newsweek maybe that for that people really wanted to make a big deal out of

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that.

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It did remind me though that like when it comes to the creative,

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like everyone's going to have a point of view.

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Everyone's going to have an opinion.

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So it's so hard.

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It's sort of appease everyone.

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Yeah, to me, it's like, was it a strong ad?

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No.

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But if you don't, if it doesn't, like don't watch the ad,

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don't buy the iPad.

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Like people were like, I, the fact that people were like,

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I feel so strongly about this thing.

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That I want the CEO of a massive, maybe what the second largest global

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corporation on the planet.

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Yes.

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To apologize to issue a public apology for this advertising they created.

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That's just like, that just is absolutely bonkers.

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And I think people, you're right, must have been a slow news week.

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People don't have anything to talk about right now.

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So they're going to go in on this ad.

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According to Fox Business, this is Apple forced to apologize,

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which is as we're talking like, you know, crisis PR, Tim Cook making an

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official statement on X,

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like hardcore response.

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Yeah, like 50 people on X forced me to try to make a public apologies,

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absolutely bonkers.

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I mean, it's like, yeah, it doesn't make sense.

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What's that? Yeah, I don't know.

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Get over it.

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What is the takeaway?

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How haven't we all done this before?

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Haven't we all.

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Don't apologize.

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Swing.

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Just don't apologize.

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No, I mean, like, move on.

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Like, actually, if you like, did something that was actually offensive,

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which has happened, you should apologize, of course.

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Yeah, they're sure.

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It's like hate speech or like racism, sexism, bigotry, apologize.

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But assuming you're like a reasonable person and a reasonable marketing team,

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and you go through that filter and you skip all of the real offenses,

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and you just made some creative that like missed the mark.

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Yeah, like, just just move on.

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Yeah, move on.

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Pull it.

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Don't apologize for it.

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Go do better next time.

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Take your lumps, learn from it.

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But like, it's like the Streisand effect, right?

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Like, you know, you want it to go away.

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Then by going and appeasing the 50 people on X who are very, very mad about it,

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and doing a public apology, you're just bringing attention to the fact that

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people hated this ad.

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Probably 50% of the people who have now watched it,

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or we're watching it because of the news that they apologized.

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Yeah, exactly.

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Rather than just, you know, being completely blind to it in the first place.

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So I just think as long as you didn't do anything,

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I was like, actually offensive.

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Just move on.

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Do better ads.

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You're turned up on this one, Mike.

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It's just like, I don't think it.

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I mean, there's too much stuff going on.

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People can scrutinize it, whatever they want, I guess.

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Everyone thinks they're a marketer, man.

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Yeah, well, in some ways, they kind of are, right?

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Like, they're the consumers of the stuff.

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So like, the marketing is only like really good in as much as it's perceived.

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So I'm not defending that it was good.

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Yeah.

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I'm just saying like, the fact that we can't go,

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oh, that ad wasn't wasn't funny here.

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That ad didn't really make me want to go buy the iPad that we're like,

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let's have a discourse that results in a CEO apologizing for this,

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is just like a weird place to be.

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Like, I'm like, what is the, what's the point?

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What is the point?

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By the way, I've been like, I don't know why I have this like weird thing that

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I do

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when I watch commercials where I try to like almost like reverse engineer it

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into a creative

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brief.

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It's really weird.

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Like how they get to this?

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Yeah, how they get to this.

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And if you watch like 80% of the commercials, like a state farm commercial or

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something,

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you're like, this must have taken zero brain power to come up with your sponsor

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There is no leap of creativity.

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There's no ambition to this.

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It's like, you know, the next nationwide, like the baby in the carousel

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says nationwide or whatever.

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And we got it like some creative ad agency got like paid on the most like iter

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ative idea

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that is not even great.

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Half the Super Bowl commercials, like not that great.

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So give it up.

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I don't know.

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Can I be in the minority on this one?

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Give it up to the effort that at least there was something here that took some

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creative brain power and at least they tried to shoot them.

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Yeah.

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I know.

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But like then it's like a re it's a self reinforcing cycle, right?

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Tim Cook apologizes.

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Now all the people who are in the big ad agencies are like, oh, shit.

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Yeah.

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I can't put my multinational brand that I'm writing ads for in the same

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position as Tim Cook.

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This is a disaster.

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What are we going to get consumers from that?

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Probably more watered down bullshit.

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Probably.

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Yeah.

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Good point.

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So it's like this cycle creates like worse creative products.

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And it's it's it's I don't know what again I get back to like what is the point

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of this.

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Now we're in this like recursive cycle that just leads to worse things like.

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So for the people who are like, Tim Cook, apologize now or forever hold your

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penis like,

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is that what you want?

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It's like the the people who like fought over like, of course, like more

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internet privacy is good.

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But like the internet being powered by ads is another example.

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Like, wait a second, your goal is that the ads that you're going to see are

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going to be less

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personalized.

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Like, if you really take a step back, personalized ads are good as a consumer.

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You'd rather have a personalized ad than an unpersonalized one.

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Yeah.

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So I think a lot of times like our outrage and the things that we get mad about

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about

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or critique constantly online end up.

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Resulting in second order consequences that are actually not in the best

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interest of the consumer.

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And it's like a weird paradoxical thing, but you know, you end up getting more

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privacy equals,

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you know, actually worse at experiences and like, right, you know, more

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accountability for

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corporations results in blander creative.

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And it's like, the stuff just kind of gets watered down because we're trying to

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like

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get the perfect, like least offensive thing. We've talked about this in an

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earlier episode.

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If you do marketing that gets a five out of 10 from everyone, it's not going to

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work.

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The point of it is to get a 10 out of 10 from the people you want it to.

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And who cares what the rest thinks.

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And if you want to like cut through the noise and get a reaction, like that's

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what you're shooting

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for. So we can't punish people for shooting for that stuff.

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Okay,

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-aster Mike from the pulpit tonight. -Sorry dude. I had two venting cold brews

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today.