SanDisk has launched a new advertising campaign that portrays iPod users as mindless sheep or robots.
The iDon’t campaign asks listeners to “Think for yourself” and “resist the monotony of the white earbuds.”
“Now is the time to break free from restrictive formats and a single source of music,” it says. “It’s time for choice, for freedom, for self-expression — and for all independent spirits to stand up and say “iDont.” You don’t need to follow. Now there is an alternative.”
The alternative is SanDisk’s own Sansa e200 (there’s a memorable name), which looks like an iPod knockoff with a pseudo-scroll wheel.
The campaign is reminiscent of Apple’s ill-fated 1985 Lemmings commercial, which portrayed potential customers as lemmings walking off a cliff. The spot is judged to be Apple’s biggest advertising blunder. It’s never a good idea to insult potential customers.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
18 responses to “SanDisk’s Anti-iPod Campaign — Lemmings Redux?”
Funny thing, it is Windows only. Yeah, that will kill the iPod.
Pretty dumb to make it Windows-only. Windows users are the last people I would ask to “resist conformityâ€ÂÂ.
I like the design though. (And don’t own an iPod)
Bloggers should all turn off their comments. I haven’t seen one useful thing said in a comment for at least 6 months.
I saw the site and did not see what it was hoping to accomplish. I will admit to using a SanDisk card in my palm pilot for storage of files and I love it. I have the freedom of what songs I listen to and with the right software I can even use ITunes without cracking the files.
SanDisk is a great company but made a silly error. I think the site was more geared to making a joke of the IPod’s popularity. They will certainly not win this battle with a campange like this.
Bryan Henry
http://techntoons.blogspot.com
Yeah, choose freedom! Choose one of the non-iPod players with proprietary formats, like ATRAC or WMV.
My real question is, why haven’t other providers adopted m4a?
I found idont.com a few months back. It’s presented as some sort of grassroots consumer movement, so I was having a hard time figuring out what made these people so mad about iPods. Then I found the link to the MP3 player…
Its ironic how people hate ipods for being popular, yet those people use windows, clearly the more mainstream way to go.
dude…..first of all….
SANDISK! they suck!
pros.
cool start up(cant lie)
can play videos(who wants 2 watchem on that small of a screen anyway?)
cons
windows=SUCKS!
not very preety
cheap feeling 2 the wheel
breaks VEry easily
needs 2 stop jocking the nano lol
sandisk go shove it up ures seriosuly
NOT FOR MAC? Simple step by step guide to Sansa on the Mac:
http://www.demasijones.com/27b…
A few other ways to kill an iPod (You can kill the revolutionary, but you can’t kill the revolution?):
* price: I get my Sansa e280 for 139 quid, including 8gb memory and FM radio
* much bigger display than Nano (1.8 inch) with the similar overall size at the same time (Sansa is much thicker)
* voice recording
* liquid metal back casing – can’t scratch it (only back)
* video playback
* Mass Storage Class — drag & drop files, or use it as pendrive.
* “The real shut off” – you can turn you Sansa off for good, it won’t drain your battery like any iPod
* longer battery life
* replaceable battery