MacDirectory magazine is the premiere creative lifestyle magazine for Apple enthusiasts featuring interviews, in-depth tech reviews, Apple news, insights, latest Apple patents, apps, market analysis, entertainment and more.
Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1522076
There is a fine line between creativity and self-destruction. Apple’s new crush advert, which shows items linked to creative pursuits being pulverised to make way for the new iPad Pro, tried to find that line but instead appears to have made a rare mis-step. It has angered a lot of people in the process. Apple has now apologised and said it no longer plans to air the ad on TV. Creative destruction is a term coined in the 1940s to describe revolutionising the economic structure from within – destroying the old one to make way for the new. Creative destruction is an essential factor of capitalism and, in Apple’s case, it used to be previously commonplace with the cannibalisation “by design” of products by new developments. The advert seems to be a response to criticism about the lack of innovation due to their incremental and iterative approach to product development in recent years. However, does their latest offering just reinforce those claims? To truly innovate, companies have to make tough decisions about whether to serve the current customer base with what they already do and are known for, or change to make way for the needs and wants of a new generation. In doing so, however, they risk alienating their current customer base. When done well, creative destruction brings both customer bases along on the journey and transitions smoothly from one to the next. Apple’s iPad crush advert illustrates the company’s attempt at creative destruction both metaphorically and physically. In trying to be relevant to the younger audience by reflecting last year’s hydraulic crushing trend on TikTok, Apple unwittingly tapped into the generational divide. In doing so, it seems to have alienated both customer bases. Dripping with nostalgia-triggering symbolism, the advert starts with the metronome, indicating time is ticking on physical pursuits. The record player starts up, crooning about time and “being down and all alone”, panning out to a wide shot of the tools of “classic” creative and leisure pursuits. It’s these items that have been at the centre of the furore, with actor Hugh Grant describing it as the destruction of the human experience, “courtesy of Silicon Valley”. The advert moves from analogue hobbies like music, painting, graffiti and sculpting, to digital pastimes, showing Pac-Man, Angry Bird trinkets and DSLR cameras – all crushed under the metaphorical pressure of change. Even emojis, rejected by many young people, and therefore one of the clearest triggers of generational differences in the digital age, get the crushing treatment. Target audience This is where I argue that the advert shifts from passive to active aggression. It leaves both audiences in its metaphoric and actual dust. Then it clumsily ends on messaging that undermines everything that has gone before, about the iPad being the slimmest version so far. It fails at being innovative and is instead a reflection of a product iteration. Is thinner and stronger enough when you have pitted the digital natives against the analogue generations and those stuck in the middle?