Usually a real marketing whiz, Apple has committed professional misconduct in the eyes of many artists. A recent ad for the iPad Pro suggested that the tablet could replace our good old creation tools.
Known for its polished and consensual advertisements, Apple found itself in the middle of a controversy after the broadcast of a new spot for its newly announced iPad Pro. Broadcast during the keynote at the beginning of May, the ad shows a hydraulic press overwhelming numbers of musical instruments, sculptures and creative tools of all kinds. From the flattening of all these objects, the iPad Pro emerges, positioned as the ultimate tool for creatives of all kinds.
Retina display versus upright piano
Unfortunately for the firm, the advertising was not at all appreciated by the same public who promptly accused the company of symbolically destroying everything that made it successful in order to promote a soulless technological gadget. The video has had almost 1.5 million views on YouTube and Tim Cook’s tweet has been shared 32,000 times, accompanied by criticism, each more harsh than the last.
On X (ex-Twitter), actor Hugh Grant called the video the perfect embodiment of “lSilicon Valley’s destruction of the human experience“. Asif Kapadia, Oscar-winning producer and director of several episodes of the series Mindhunter, goes even furtherseeing in this advertisement “the most honest metaphor for what technology companies do to art and artists: crush them, use them, pay them a pittance to finally appropriate their work and pretend that they are the ones who created everything.»
Symbolic failure for Apple
Faced with the public outcry created by this ad, Apple had no choice but to apologize flatly, barely 24 hours after the video was released. “Creativity is part of our DNA at Apple and it is extremely important to us to design products that allow everyone to create without barriers» indicated the firm which acknowledges having “missed the mark with this video» and be «Sorry“.
Originally planned to be broadcast on television, the ad will remain confined to YouTube and Twitter where it has already attracted numerous criticisms. The controversy created by the latter has hit Apple hard, which has long taken care to embody precisely this way of “think differently», notably through the legendary 1984 advertisement directed by Ridley Scott. The philosophical gap between the two spots is enough to make one cringe.
Source : Adage
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