Apple Music head Jimmy Iovine has won today’s “Yes, they really said that” award after an appearance on CBS This Morning.
Iovine was there talking up the latest ad for Apple Music, which features singer Mary J. Blige, actress Kerry Washington, and singer/actress Taraji P. Henson just kinda hanging out with knives and salsa dancing. This one follows the also-great original spot from September, but Iovine didn’t necessarily explain the origin of the woman-centric campaign (Selma director Ava DuVernay helmed both of them) as well as he could have.
Playlists, the new mixtapes.
Go ahead ladies!@maryjblige @kerrywashington @TherealTarajihttps://t.co/cctGZAhwuPhttps://t.co/VTnkmeEr4E— Apple Music (@AppleMusic) September 21, 2015
The Apple Music ads are fun, and they’re way less awkward to watch than those other, weird ones featuring artists performing in an otherwise empty room with no windows. But on CBS This Morning, Iovine said some weird things.
“[Apple Music is] a streaming service, and what it does is it gives you 30 million songs, and it serves them up to you and makes it easy to find music,” Iovine said. “Women find it very difficult at times, some women, to find music.”
“He’s talking about me,” co-host Norah O’Donnell said, mentioning a conversation she and Iovine had earlier.
“And this helps make it easier,” Iovine added.
He went on to describe Apple Music’s curation and human-driven algorithms; later, he talked about where the beloved ads came from.
Dinner with @maryjblige, @kerrywashington and @TherealTaraji??
Sounds like a PARTY. https://t.co/PTC4Zk9Ul3https://t.co/dWhwb5Jaef— Apple Music (@AppleMusic) November 19, 2015
“I just thought of a problem,” he said. “Girls are sitting around … y’know, talking about boys, right? Or complaining about boys when they’ve had their hearts broken or whatever. And they need music for that, right? So it’s hard to find the right music. Not everybody has the right lists and knows a DJ or something.”
I’m not a marketing person, but this seems to be a messaging blunder. Some better answers to the question of where those spots originated exist, whether they’re actually true or not. Mary J. Blige joined Iovine on the show, and she did a way better job of saying basically the same thing without making women sound like idiots.
“It was a genius idea to have girls,” Blige said, “because that’s what we do when we get together. We sit, we listen to music, we talk about life, love, marriage, things like that.”
That’s a much better answer, and Iovine should have left it alone — especially since in my experience, Apple Music isn’t actually that good at finding new music. More accurately, it might be too good, and the resulting nested playlists and themes and artists and tiles send me screaming from the app. I’ve taken to just asking Siri to pull music from a particular band or year and left it at that.
Regardless, it may be time for Iovine to undergo another round of PR training.
Via: The Verge
