The holiday season is upon us so you know what that means. It’s time to complain about Apple’s holiday ad.
Oh, you thought it was about loving your fellow voyagers on this small blue marble or something? Oh, no, no. That’s like eighth or ninth on the list after complaining about Apple’s holiday ad and finding other animals to shove into turkeys before putting them into deep fat fryers.
Setting the stage for this ad-venting calendar back in early November, Julie Love wrote in the San Jose Mercury News:
“What happened to Apple’s once-great ads?”
Every generation gets the Apple ads it deserves, Julie.
It may be time for Apple to “think different” about its advertising.
Ooh, late 1990s zing! Love bemoans the fact that Apple’s recent ads don’t stack up to its “1984” ad. You know, they don’t stack up to what’s considered by many to be the greatest ad ever.
“One problem now is that Apple is the establishment,” [Edward Boches, an advertising professor at Boston University,] said. “They need to find a new voice.”
And there’s no app for that.
Do you get your Apple zingers in bulk at Costco or something? Yeah, sure, they’re the same Apple zingers everyone else has, but you can get a whole pallet of them for pennies on the dollar!
Last year’s ad was a truly delightful story of how that checked-out looking teen was really making everyone the most touching Christmas present of them all.
So, naturally, what did we hear? “Kids spend too much time on their phones!”
So, let’s do it all over again because… uh, holiday stress has driven us to it? The Macalope’s not really sure what the point of this annual exercise is.
Apple, you may have heard, has a new ad out for the 2015 holiday season. It’s another touching story, told without many words.
And, guess what. It’s all wrong, too.
“The Apple Christmas TV ad may be sweet, but it leaves a bad taste”
Of course it does. It has to or the Guardian‘s Hannah Jane Parkinson doesn’t have anything to write about.
There’s no doubt this is a touching effort from Apple’s marketing team…
That I will now try to ruin.
However, there are a few things we all need to address here. Namely, what kind of empathy-void sociopath ruins her grandmother’s Christmas by reminding her of her dead husband? The love of her life, who is dead.
Exactly! Don’t remember people! Particularly on Christmas! Jeez. Who wants to be held back by all those icky feelings? Blech. No, it’s far better to live your life as a single-minded killing machine like a shark. Or to evolve beyond the need for emotions into a pure energy state. Why doesn’t Apple make ads for those utterly devoid of feeling? You know, psychopaths, why don’t they make ads for them, huh? Huh?
Point of fact, however: We don’t actually know for sure that her husband is dead. At no point in the ad do we see his desiccated corpse. He may just be out playing 18 holes of golf. Which is only a near-death experience, not death itself.
No ad Apple produces will be considered up to the standard of the serial jerks who judge Apple ads. And every year someone proves that for us. That’s the great thing about the horny one’s job: Someone’s always willing to step up to the plate. Or down into the cesspool, however you want to phrase it.