Last Tuesday, Apple released an ad for its new, improved iPad Pro — a video once, but no longer, destined for TV — and it was… controversial. And in the week or so since, they’ve taken some heat for two things:
1. Making said ad for their new, improved iPad that crushed the arts into rubble to the strains of a Sonny and Cher tune.
2. Withdrawing said ad and issuing a statement when much of their audience responded negatively.
The ad in question, in case you somehow missed it, is thus:
(If you need a palate cleanser after that, filmmaker Reza Sixo Safai was quick to provide a fixed version.)
So, yeah, you can probably see why members of the artistic and creative community might be upset by it. The imagery is viscerally disturbing — the crushing of the bust and the manikin, in particular, were rough, and I’ll admit, as a pianist, it broke my heart a little to see the piano get crushed into splinters and sproinged strings. Critics in a number of industries, the ad industry included, saw it as — and thank you for this, Ad Age’s Tim Rudd — “a grim representation of technology crushing the history of human creativity.” And it was pointed out by some that it was a departure from Apple’s usually positive, uplifting tone.
But others thought it wasn’t the ad but the popular reaction to the ad that went too far. Some were outraged about the pulling of the ad and the subsequent statement from Apple VP of Marketing Communications Tor Myhren: “Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world. Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.”
I have to agree with Tor — they missed the mark here. They wanted to say a thing to people, and they said a different thing and made people whom they didn’t want to be mad be mad, which makes it a not very good ad. And…
I mean, no “and.” That’s the tweet.
Ads should be good.
I should mention from the outset that I’m a pragmatist. I’m a creative, and I’m a pragmatist — I contain multitudes. I’ve mentioned in the past that one of the things that drew me to copywriting in the first place was that it’s creative writing, but with a goal — creativity with a challenge attached. The creative team has to come up with something innovative and eye-catching, and it has to effectively convey a message to the target audience.
The aim of the ad, it’s pretty easy to infer, was to convey that all these tools of the creative arts — musical instruments and paints and video games and cameras and so on — are incorporated within the new iPad’s numerous capabilities for artistic expression, the iPad’s revolutionary thinness notwithstanding. Essentially, they were going for a creative, artsy version of this:
The problem is that the imagery in no way implies incorporating those capabilities into the iPad, compressing these large artistic tools into a tiny profile — it implies destroying them in favor of a small electronic device. It’s not “big things made small” — it’s big things reduced to splinters and paint gushing like blood in the third act of Cabin in the Woods and that poor stress ball getting his eyeballs gruesomely squeezed out, at which point they’re no longer useful as tools of artistic expression.
The violent crushing of all the implements of the arts didn’t say, “We, like you, respect the arts and feel everyone should have access to them,” it said, “Fuck a piano, amiright?” It very much gave resentful of my parents for not letting me quit piano lessons. Now, I strongly suspect that “fuck a piano” didn’t appear on the creative brief for Apple’s internal team, but that was pretty much the entirety of the ad, plus a product pitch at the end.
If what they gave was destruction, and what they intended was compressing creativity, they got it wrong. If they wanted to create positive associations with their product among their target audience and instead they created negative ones, they got it wrong. Ergo, not a good ad.
“But it’s creative!”
Absolutely it is.
It’s creative and edgy, and one creative strategist rightly pointed out that ads have been criticized for “playing it too safe and not pushing the limits of creativity,” and this one is “provocative and it got people talking.” But, like… this isn’t an art installation. It’s not a gallery where admirers come to discuss your provocative art and debate your intended message. It’s the ad industry, where artistic expression is still expected to be in service of a commercialized goal — like, they’re called “commercials” — and if your “provocative” ad gets specifically your target customers talking about how much they hate the ad and resent the very existence of the product it’s shilling, maybe you were pushing your creativity in the wrong direction.
Again, this might be the pragmatist in me coming out, but advertising is creativity with an objective, and that means accepting that sometimes, you’re going to have to say, “This ad is cool and pushes the creative envelope, and it was fun to produce, and it turned out great, but it’s probably not ready for prime time.”
“They shouldn’t have pulled it! They’re just caving to criticism!”
Why not, though?
I mean, yeah, sometimes, you do put out ads that are offensive to some people, and some people are hypersensitive and just looking for a reason to be offended. But in this case, the people who are up in arms about the ad are the people Apple is hoping to sell on the new iPad. The goal of the ad was to make them see it as another tool for artistic expression, and instead, they’re widely discussing it in the context of the destruction of said tools. It’s one thing to be unafraid of being offensive, but enraging your target consumers isn’t stellar messaging strategy.
And that’s why I believe pulling it wasn’t the wrong move. I mean, yeah, if you’re trying to put out something edgy and subversive and people are offended by it and you want to stand by that, go ahead. Go for it. But that’s not what Apple would be standing behind. They’d be standing behind a bad ad, and what’s the point of doing that? To spite your critics? To pretend you didn’t screw up and send a message you didn’t intend?
I’m not going to be sending any attaboys to Apple for making that choice — the choice was to solve a problem they caused in the first place. I’m just gonna say that of all the things they did in the course of this screwup, pulling it the ad and releasing a statement that said, “This ad didn’t say what we wanted to say,” was not their biggest sin.
“Apple wants to crush creativity! They always have!”
Sigh.
Really?
Don’t get me wrong — at the risk of repeating myself, this ad shows the destruction of tools of artistic expression, and it is dark and disturbing. There was no other contrasting messaging that could have added nuance and made the ad about something other than straight-up crushing art stuff. And when critics say, “That looks like Apple is destroying artistic expression in favor of their new electronic device,” folks don’t get to say, “Clearly you’re misinterpreting it,” because… that’s what that imagery is saying. And if Apple was trying to say something else, they should have used different imagery.
That said, I don’t think Apple is intentionally, actively trying to stifle creativity. (And realistically, I don’t think all the people complaining about the ad actually think that, either. I will donate $5 to the Dreaming Zebra Foundation for every opining ad professional who wan’t posting their feelz from a MacBook Pro or an iPhone.) They haven’t been without their missteps, and the debate about producing art physically vs. digitally, particularly in the age of generative AI, is and has been fully appropriate. But this ad, in particular, is not Apple saying the quiet part out loud.
To be clear: I see no reason people shouldn’t have had an initial reaction like they did, and I include myself among that crowd. But if, having had our initial reaction, we give it a second look, I think we might get beyond “Apple doesn’t care about the arts! Apple wants to crush the arts! Apple says screw the arts, and that’s clearly what they want to say in this ad,” because if we know one thing about giant corporations, it’s that they’re famously prone to being completely transparent about their motives that would be offensive to their most dedicated consumer base. (We all remember that controversial Purdue Pharma campaign, “Sure, People Will Die, But At Least I Got A Boat.”) This ad wasn’t Apple at long last being open about their “Fuck a piano” philosophy — it’s just them making a bad ad.
Make good ads.
Do that. Get creative, get expressive, go wild, come up with brilliant and/or outlandish and/or envelope-pushing and/or at-or-beyond-the-bounds-of-taste ideas… and then move forward with the ones that won’t make your target customers actively hate, and talk publicly and at length about how much they hate, the product you’re trying to sell them. Push other envelopes than that one. Do your work as a creative, and embrace the challenge of creating work that is artistic and provocative and controversial and also effective.
Because that’s what we do. And because word travels fast, people talk, and your competitors might be seriously on the ball.
Not quite Ryan Reynolds fast, but still impressive turnaround.