Apple’s pretty darn good when it comes to advertising, and 2017 was no exception. Whether it was Portrait mode, AirPods or the iPhone X, creatives working on Apple ads found new and exciting ways to sell us on Cupertino’s latest innovations.
Check out our picks for the year’s best Apple ads below.
Upgrading to iPhone X means facing a learning curve. Since Apple’s futuristic phone forgoes the familiar home button, iPhone X owners must learn a bunch of gestures.
Apple wants to make the transition as smooth as possible, so the company just uploaded a video to ease the pain of any iPhone X owner shellshocked by all that bright, shiny newness.
Anybody who thinks Apple can’t innovate should look in awe at the fecal hurricane whipped up by the company’s unorthodox iPhone X marketing plan.
By giving popular YouTubers early access to the next-gen iPhone, and allowing them to “scoop” the old-school journalists traditionally granted such preferential treatment, Cupertino upended the typical review cycle.
Apple apparently bruised a few fragile egos in the process. Frankly, it’s hilarious watching the ensuing media meltdown.
The latest rumors about the next-generation Apple Watch indicate it might come with LTE cellular data in a slick new design. But Apple Watch already offers data connectivity via iPhone, and Cupertino’s marketing tends to focus on benefits, not features. So how will Apple craft a new product story around built-in cellular?
My guess is it will all be about replacing the need for a very old technology: pockets. Apple Watch Series 3 will move all the contents of our pockets into the cloud.
Whether it’s adding tree-lined avenues or high-tech display tables for showing off the Apple Watch or iPhone, the design of the Apple Store is constantly changing.
The latest innovation is a giant floor-to-ceiling television display, which can be seen at Apple’s new Saddle Creek Store in Germantown, Tennessee.
And you thought the 12.9-inch iPad Pro had a big screen!
At this week’s “Let us loop you in” keynote, Apple revealed a major shift in its smartwatch strategy. Tim Cook tried to dress it up by announcing new Apple Watch bands and a price drop, but the most significant aspect was what he did not say: There was no mention of third-party Watch apps.
After Monday’s keynote, Apple updated its website with a new marketing proposition that represents a tacit acknowledgment that, right now, Apple Watch is only good for three things: notifications, fitness and health.
What happened to the idea that there is an app for everything?
A cynic would call it greenwashing, but the most surprising thing about Tim Cook’s “Loop you in” event was what it said about how he’s running Apple.
When Steve Jobs was around, Apple’s product events were about the products, and little else. Yeah, Jobs would often start with corporate issues, but he usually boasted about how the company was absolutely crushing it.
By contrast, the first 25 minutes of Monday’s event — almost half of the hour-long presentation — focused on things only tangentially related to Apple products. Cook and his lieutenants discussed government snooping, privacy, recycling, the environment, renewable energy, creating platforms for sustaining customers’ health — and even protecting Chinese yaks.
Jobs used to touch on issues like these, but under Cook, they’ve taken center stage. Cook has turned Apple’s product events into showcases for corporate responsibility.
Parodies of Jony Ive and Apple’s rarefied advertising are nothing new, but you rarely get to watch a spoof featuring a comedian as talented as Sacha Baron Cohen.
To promote his new movie The Brothers Grimsby, the creator of Ali G, Bruno and Borat recorded a spot-on Apple parody, which shows that — despite the many who have aped it in the past — there’s still mileage in poking some good-natured fun at Apple’s way of selling us on its latest revolutionary products.
Check it out below.
These days, Apple is known for its impeccable design sensibilities. Less than 20 years ago, though, that wasn’t the case. Case in point? These awesomely retro, fluorescently hideous in-store demos made to help sell the Macintosh in 1997.
Apple’s marketing team creates gorgeous ads that show every minuscule detail of new iPhones, but what would the images look like if they were produced using the original Macintosh and MacPaint?
Some redditor with way too much time on his or her hands decided to dig out an old Mac and find out, and the results are actually pretty fantastic.
The makers of a tiny (but badass!) new LED flashlight say they took inspiration from the 9mm bullet, but Apple’s incessant drive toward miniaturization seems at least as much of an influence.
You can almost hear the dulcet tones of Jony Ive’s voice in the description of the Bullet, which its maker calls “the tiniest flashlight on Kickstarter.”
SAN FRANCISCO — Just how big is Apple’s next product reveal going to be? All signs point to it being a massive blowout of an event — far bigger than the standard iPhone “s” upgrade the world is expecting.
Three new Apple Music ads show off Cupertino’s creative cool, highlighting musical acts and touting the tagline, “All the artists you love and are about to love, all in one place.”
Apple Watch still isn’t available for the masses, but Apple is ramping up its marketing efforts among fashionistas with a multipage spread in the March issue of Vogue.
Multiple versions of the Apple Watch are shown across the seven-page ad, which includes closeups of the watch bands as well as full-size pictures of the entire device to give readers a better idea about whether Jony Ive’s timepiece will fit in with their wardrobes.
Take a look at some of the other ads below:
The iPhone 6 is the first iPhone with a camera lens that protrudes slightly instead of being flush with the back of the device. It was a necessary design trade-off, allowing Jony Ive’s team of designers to cram the advanced optics into the iPhone 6 necessary to make it the best smartphone camera ever.
But that doesn’t change the fact that Apple usually likes clean lines in its product designs. And that protruding camera lens, when viewing the iPhone 6 in profile, turns an otherwise clean line into an unsightly bulge. Apple can’t stand that bulge, so the company is going to the unprecedented length of using clever lighting and photography to hide it in its marketing materials.