If you are unfamiliar with the messaging app SOMA, you will soon learn about them through a confrontational advertising campaign that implores people to give up on Skype, WhatsApp and Viber.
It’s for your own good, the company says.
SOMA Messenger encrypts data end-to-end and auto-deletes messages, its team declaring the app to be the most secure in the space. It also allows up to 500 people for group chats and up to four in group video or voice calls.
Apple’s six-year dabble into the world of advertising has come to an end. The company is reportedly surrendering its iAd program over entirely to publishers. That means publishers will get full control over the creation of ads, ad management and selling them. Apple apparently just doesn’t want anything to do with the ad business anymore.
The billboards and ads featuring beautiful photographs shot with an iPhone 6 are nearly gone. Apple is now promoting a new iPhone. But that does not mean Apple has forgotten the photographers whose work helped sell phones and treat the world to art in public spaces.
Photographers from the “Shot on iPhone 6” campaign have been getting packages in the mail, a pair of cloth-covered coffee table books featuring their work. The books were apparently a surprise and included a pair of white gloves for handling with care.
Maybe you know this sickening feeling: Your smartphone slips from your hand and starts its descent toward the ground. If you’re standing in an asphalt parking lot or walking down a city sidewalk — and you don’t have your phone protected in a life-preserving case — you know what happens next.
Time seems to stand still as the phone falls toward earth. Then … Impact. Shattering glass. And a horrifying glimpse at the damage done.
Are you tired of your Instagram feed being low on sponsored posts from companies trying to sell you things? If so, here comes the best news you’ve ever heard.
The company has opened up its advertising code to make it easier than ever for partners to get ads all up in the Facebook-owned photo-sharing app.
Cult of Mac’s Photo Famous series introduces you to the groundbreaking photographers featured in Apple’s “Shot on iPhone 6” ad campaign.
Michael Mainenti is in the developmental stages of a photography career, a point when he should be looking at the works of the established masters and saying, “Some day.”
Mainenti is faithful to this time-honored tradition except that some day is already happening. The 25-year-old college student is among the photographers whose work was selected by Apple for a global advertising campaign to show off the improved camera in the iPhone 6.
“It is a humbling feeling to see my work in the same advertising campaign with photographers I followed even before the launch of the ‘Shot on iPhone 6’ ads,” Mainenti told Cult of Mac. “It’s a boost of confidence and motivation to get better.”
Cult of Mac’s Photo Famous series introduces you to the groundbreaking photographers featured in Apple’s “Shot on iPhone 6” ad campaign.
The thick Icelandic fog lifted and Austin Mann saw an otherworldly glacier emerge. Photography is a way for Mann, a Christian and a professional travel photographer, to worship god, and this was the kind of scene that spoke to him.
But to get the shot, he would have to leave his camera gear in the car for a climb on all fours down a rocky cliff. Mann put his new iPhone 6 Plus in his pocket and scrambled down to make the picture.
The shot, taken using the iPhone’s panorama mode, was among the most prominent photos featured in Apple’s “Shot on iPhone 6” marketing campaign, a promotional blitz that began in the spring with billboards, giant banners stretched across the sides of buildings, and advertising on television and in magazines.
Cult of Mac’s Photo Famous series introduces you to the groundbreaking photographers featured in Apple’s “Shot on iPhone 6” ad campaign.
There was a divorce, financial setback and hurt when the father she finally met had little interest in building a relationship. Cielo de la Paz needed just one small sign to remind her happier days lie ahead.
She would get her sign — a billboard no less — and when she saw it for the first time, it gave her a much-needed feeling of triumph.
The 39-year-old single mother had a photo selected by Apple for its “Shot on iPhone 6” campaign that has now been seen in outdoor ads in 24 countries. The picture was made after a rain storm. It is of de la Paz’s reflected self in a puddle with fallen leaves floating to form a frame around her silhouette. She is holding a red umbrella.
Flavio Sarescia’s photography is on billboards around the world, walls of train stations and even the back cover of a magazine. Yet he makes his living selling dog food.
His moody photo of a resting surfer on a rocky New Zealand beach at sunset caught the eye of Apple and landed in the “Shot on iPhone 6” advertising campaign, a collection of photos and videos from more than 50 iPhone 6 users prominently displayed in more than 70 cities around the world.
Sarescia and other hobbyists have pictures alongside those of established professionals, a subtle pitch to the rest of us that suggests whether the iPhone 6 is in the hands of an amateur or artist, both can create on “equal” terms. We all can make great pictures.
If you’ve ever visited the subway platforms in the Big Apple, you know they’re plastered with advertisements. That’s where a free new app called NO AD comes in.
The work of Re+Public, a team of devs who use technology to “alter the current expectations of urban media,” NO AD is an augmented-reality app that strips the New York City subway system of its ads — and replaces them with art.
Just point your iPhone camera at a billboard and, hey presto, you’ll see it vanish and a piece of street art will seamlessly appear where there was once corporate propaganda.
Apple may view its mobile health push as a “moral obligation,” but for it to really become the tech leader in this area it’s going to need to ensure that it has user trust on its side.
That may help explain why — ahead of the September 9 event many predict will see the unveiling of the long-awaited iWatch — Apple has taken the opportunity to update its HealthKit privacy policy to ensure that developers keep user data away from advertisers and data brokers.
Are you a developer or advertiser looking to make a profitable app? The best way to do so is integrate a mobile monetization platform that inserts ads for other apps in your app. Recently moving into iOS operating environment, one of Google Android’s biggest and most successful ad networks to date, StartApp, now offers the first SDK to support Apple’s new programming language, Swift.
Watch the video showing how StartApp can help monetize your iOS app here.
From sledgehammer-tossing freedom fighters to misunderstood teenagers at Christmas, Apple’s TV commercials have hit us with some truly iconic imagery over the years. But when a company has been around since the 1970s, it’s no great surprise that a select few ads would slip our collective memory.
After scouring through hundreds of big-time commercials and tiny TV spots that promoted Cupertino’s products over the years, here are our picks for the Apple advertisements that time forgot. All of them are worthy of a second look — and almost all of them for the right reasons.
No one makes commercials like Apple. Or no one did, until the last year or so when everyone from Samsung to Google has caught up to Cupertino’s marketing genius.
In a move to retake its marketing crown in 2014, Apple is thinking different than partnering with a traditional advertising agency by assembling its own massive internal marketing team, according to an AdAge report, and it could rival the world’s top firms that have been around for decades.
Since the airing of Apple’s iconic “1984” commercial to launch the Macintosh, tech companies have had a special relationship with the Super Bowl. Now Apple is one of several tech giants — including Google, Yahoo and Intel — which have chipped in $2 million each in cash and services to help offset taxpayer dollars involved with bringing the historic 50th Super Bowl to the San Francisco 49ers stadium in Santa Clara, California.
One of the first things Steve Jobs did after returning to Apple in the late 90s was to bring back TBWA\Chiat\Day, the ad agency which had previously produced the memorable “1984” Macintosh commercial. The result was the famous “Think Different” campaign, which helped set Apple off on its present course. Now it seems that Apple is moving away from TBWA\Chiat\Day, toward producing more of its television ads in-house.
But while Apple is beating rival Samsung on both the quality of its products and adverts, it is perhaps losing out when it comes to the kind of big digital media strategies that really attract attention (and customers) — like Ellen DeGeneres’ famous Oscars selfie which Publicis CEO Maurice Levy recently valued at between $800 million and $1 billion.
With that in mind, Apple is reportedly changing up its marketing approach to invest more in digital marketing and social media support — adding four new digital agencies to its roster.
UPDATE: Facebook has now confirmed auto-playing ads will rollout this week. See the update at the bottom of this post.
Facebook’s auto-playing video ads, which first appeared on iOS last week, will be seen by all users on all platforms later this week, The Wall Street Journal reports. You’ll see them on your desktop as well as your mobile devices, and they will play automatically as you scroll through your timeline.
Apple began running its Mac Pro teaser ad in theaters before showings Jobs last week, but now that no one is up to seeing Kutcher doing his worst Steve impression, Apple’s pushed the ad out onto YouTube.
The ad is essentially the same as one that was shown during the Mac Pro announcement at WWDC, except they’ve added some new cinematic-styled text at the end.
Apple’s Pandora-like competitor, iTunes Radio, is gearing up for a fall launch, but before Apple can stream songs to iOS devices across the U.S. for free, it’s got to find someone to help pay for it all, so it’s recruited some of the biggest brands in the world to supply it with ads.
The list of brand partners participating in the iTunes Radio launch will include McDonalds, Nissan, Pepsi and Procter & Gamble — all of which get exclusivity within their industries until the end of 2013.
Microsoft’s recent barrageofanti–iPadads have nearly all featured third-party tablets rather than boasting about Microsoft’s own iPad-killer, the Surface RT. Now that it’s desperately slashed prices on RT units, Microsoft is feeling inexplicably cocky in its latest ad, which pits the hardware and software specs of the iPad against that of the Surface RT.
Basically, Microsoft is praying the iPad’s lack of a keyboard (that you have to purchase separately), Microsoft Office, and a USB port will be enough to entice some unlucky nerds to buy a Surface RT instead of an iPad now that it’s cheaper than ever but still deprived of quality apps.
Joining its buddy Microsoft, Nokia has decided to start attacking Apple’s products head-on with a new ad campaign for the Nokia 925 that bashes the iPhone 5’s camera.
The new ad starts by noting that more pictures are taken on the iPhone every day than on any other camera. But Nokia’s all about quality instead of quantity, goes the ad, so you should totally buy the the Nokia 925 if the only thing that matters in the world to you is your smartphone’s camera sensor.
To Nokia’s credit, their PureView cameras are pretty nice—if you don’t mind lugging around a big bulky Windows Phone that still doesn’t even have Instagram.
While Microsoft has lost an astonishing $900 million on the Surface RT and dropped the price to $349 to clear out inventory, they’re still bashing the iPad on national TV, this time using Siri to woefully lament her own feature-by-feature inadequacy compared to the Surface RT.
I have to admit, I love this commercial. Sure, the iPad is an infinitely better tablet, but I still think this is a funny and effective attempt by Microsoft to make the Surface RT seem like less of a lame duck. They should really be exerting this effort on the Surface Pro, though, which has gotten a much better reception than the also-ran RT.
Check out the inexplicable Samsung ad above. A weirdo sitting in a barren landscape, giggling at apples, as a synthesizer farts. Then, suddenly, he does a weird dance with Ninjas. Hey, don’t you want to buy a Galaxy S4 now?
It’s completely stupid, and Steve Jobs would have hated it. How do you know? Because legendary Apple ad man Ken Segall says he would have. Here’s why: Steve didn’t want his ad companies huffing the paint thinner.