Destruction may not be the best way to illustrate creativity. It's the hard lesson Apple learned after major backlash over its new “Crushed” TV ad promoting the new iPad Pro and its revolutionary Tandem OLED display technology. Now, the company has apologized and scrapped plans to run the ad on television.
In the ad, a wide collection of creative tools, from guitars to cameras, paintings, a metronome, sculptures and even emojis, are violently crushed in a giant press. When the creative violence is complete, the steel plates are removed to reveal a beautiful iPad Pro 13 in its place.
The idea is that all this creativity can be combined in this iPad Pro with M4. But that message is quickly lost when you witness the destruction of precious objects.
Apple first played the video at its “Let Loose” event on May 7. I remember sitting with about 40 people in one of Apple's New York offices and watching uncomfortably as the record player, guitar, TVs, and cameras broke. flattened and sometimes exploited. My rational brain got the point, but my emotional brain was disturbed and I barely noticed the iPad Pro at the end.
I wasn't the only one who felt this way and now Apple is responding.
On Thursday, Apple's vice president of marketing communications, Tor Myhren, told Ad Age that he would not air the ad on television (it's still written on YouTube), adding: “Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it's incredibly “It's important to us to design Products that empower creatives around the world. Our goal is to always celebrate the countless ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through the iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we're sorry.”
The similarities between these two videos (15 years apart) are striking. Both evoke a similar discomfort. pic.twitter.com/59uGugPxoXMay 9, 2024
Apple doesn't offer many apologies. Steve Jobs told iPhone 4 owners who were experiencing connectivity issues that they were “holding it wrong.” But this is no longer Job's apple. Apple CEO Tim Cook seems more willing to repent.
By the way, this is not the first time we have seen this bad idea. As The Verge noted in its coverage, 15 years ago LG produced an ad nearly identical to Apple's concept: an enclosure filled with creative objects (painting and a violin, for example), all smashed against one of LG's latest phones. . The similarities are striking.
We can call this a rare misstep by the protean tech giant, and it's unlikely to distract from the amazing innovation we witnessed on May 7. As my 13-inch iPad Pro notes: “Apple's iPad Pro experience now feels more premium than ever, with the 2024 model boasting almost shocking thinness, intriguing new power thanks to a new M4 chip, and “Dual-panel OLED display that delivers stunning image quality, with blacks close to the level of a plasma display.”
I'm sure that can be represented in a new ad.
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