It’s remarkable how rapidly Apple is upping the sophistication of its marketing for the iPhone. The initial ads stressed the coolness of multitouch and whipping the phone around, appealing to the slavering Early Adopters who ran out to pay $600 on the first pressing. Now that the iPhone has dropped to $400, though, Apple has created a new ad campaign that focuses on the way people use it in the real world — the crazy interface barely even shows up.
The three new ads were shot against black back-drops in New York. Some enterprising blogs have already tracked down the locations of the shoots, but I’m more fascinated by the overall messages Apple is sending by letting people tell their stories. Take “Mankind,” told by Doug and shown above. In the spot, he talks about Visual Voicemail and nothing else, how it lets you see the length and sender of all messages and ignore the ones you hate. The picture he paints is rich, complaining about the guy who owes you money and leaves a four-minute message — it’s obviously a bunch of excuses, and he’s not going to pay you. Skip it!
Perhaps the most effective piece for me stars Stephano. It’s called “One Thing.” In it, he mentions that he used to carry an iPod, a camera, a regular cell phone and a cell phone for texting and e-mail. Now he has just one thing. Exactly. Apple is showing how this thing fits into people’s lives. It’s really pretty compelling.
What iPhone story would you tell the world?
(Screencap from TUAW)
10 responses to “New iPhone Commercials Emphasize Real-World Benefits”
It is wonderful how they keep making this very stripped out Ads.
iPhone design and Jonathan Ive aesthetics is very striped out.
Most people would not like it, tho.
People like over designed things, and Microsoft knows that.
These look like the work of Errol Morris.
I’ve long thought that simple 1 x feature/benefit ads would appeal to non-Mac users, so this seems like a market share campaign.
However, I wonder if this will repair the damage done by the ill-advised iPhone discount PR. Would it not have been better to have reduced the price by $100 and offered the voucher to early adopters. Then, in late-November, a second discount of $100 could have been offered to increase Christmas sales. Early adopters would not expect a second voucher after this (longer) period of time since launch. Indeed, is there any evidence that the original $600 price was impacting sales? Perhaps. I would be interested to know the values of units sold x $200 compared to the income from Apple’s AT&T contract.
The issue of unlocking could have been easily addressed by a combination of a clearer usage agreement in iTunes when syncing, requiring an “Chipped iPhones will cease to work – OK” button. Then, a positive campaign (competition?) for developers to create Safari-Apps for iPhone would have reduced the desire for third-party installs. Apple should remember that transparency is your friend – and beware that maintaining build quality and the ability to support a much larger installed base will have as much impact on brand and sales as any discount.
I love these ads! I thought the “I’m a Mac i’m a PC” ad were the best ever but these come close. Also, check out mw blog “Fake Bill Gates” at http://gatesdiary.blogspot.com. What, can’t a man do a bit of shameless advertising?
I actually thought the ads were a bit lame. It’s an interesting approach to do the whole bare bones, but the guys weren’t really that compelling. Maybe they could do one with Ellen Feiss…