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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1522076
The core Apple customers remember the joys of analogue and digital pursuits, with American baby boomers, generation X and millennials citing Apple as their favourite brand. Apple has topped the Interbrand Best Global Brands list year on year. However, I found the children and grandchildren they buy Apple products for are left feeling the ad is irrelevant and late to the crushing trend. I showed this advert to a group of gen Z learners who are also working full-time – Apple’s future target consumer – to gauge their opinion. The first response was not one of admiration for the technology or innovation. It was one of contempt at a brand that had made a clumsy attempt at recreating a trend, like that uncle at the wedding trying to be down with the kids. While they agreed that the crushed things fit into the iPad Pro, this wasn’t a positive message, with comments about sustainability issues and waste. Human behaviour and perception lean towards building meaning from stimuli due to our context and understanding. Everyone will view the advert through their lens of experience, with musicians feeling triggered by the metronome and instruments, and artists by the sadness of paint moving to spray cans and then digitised altogether. In a time when we increasingly need to come together, this advert pushes the audience apart and also runs contrary to the song that overlays the piece (All I Ever Need is You by Sonny and Cher). The advert misses the mark in so many ways, and while creative destruction is the driver of change and innovation, consumers old and new need to be taken on the journey. While the current customer holds this brand dear and is now aware of the new features, the brand-building work looking towards the future fails. Is it authentic to the Apple brand loyalists? Yes. But if it is trying to move in a new direction, signalling change and the passing of what has gone before, it fails to do so. It’s a lesson to all businesses that if they want radical change they must ensure that they walk the walk rather than tinkering at the edges. Otherwise, they risk drifting into irrelevance and becoming a nostalgic item like the things they are crushing.