Apple’s new ad is totally amazing and totally wrong…for you.
Apple is a total brand powerhouse. Their ads are amazing, everyone wants to advertise like apple, unfortunately, this strategy just won’t work for you.
Apple’s new ad “Don’t mess with Mother” (where the “nature” is implied) is an impressive feat of digital photography, all pulled off with an iphone, and you could totally make the same video with your phone if you also have access to underwater housings, stabilizers, editing software, and don’t forget the access to the most amazing locations on earth, like a custom-timed avalanche and a live active volcano.
Look they even show you the lengths they went to (and a few glimpses of the other tools they used) to get the shots.
But that’s not the problem, at least not for Apple. They will continue to sell approximately a gabillion phones and that number will trend up and down and everyone will toast the commercials smashing success. Meanwhile, every production house and ad agency will try to tout aspects of Apple’s marketing and filmmaking and promise it to you and your brand, But the main reason that they can’t is that you are not Apple. You are also not Nike or Coke. They can assume that you know certain things about their brand. For every million views they get of a rattlesnake biting at the camera’s lens, there are 10 million more of Steve Jobs, or Time Cook explaining the new features of the phone over the past decade. Apple has made years of adroit moves, including product development and advertising choices that have put them in the position that they are in. And for every Circular Pizza Box commercial with great characters and story, there is a video of a man on stage calmly explaining what their product is and what it can do. Don’t underestimate that. People don’t buy tickets to Apple’s commercials. People don’t blow off a couple of hours of work to watch apple’s commercials. But because people breathlessly behave in that way about Apple announcements Apple can advertise like they do.
But do you remember how Apple first turned the tide of computer buying? It wasn’t the lady throwing the hammer at the screen (that ad won awards, but Apple still struggled for decades before they began to overtake PC’s). It was a series of silly little videos of two guys explaining the difference between two products and two ways of thinking. Apple made its major inroads shifting perception and getting people to buy their computers over, say Dell, by making a clever little commercial that explained the benefits of their product (with some not-so-subtle digs at the way things used to be done).
This is probably where your company is now. If you are Nike however, you are way past this and you can inspire, enrage, and be clever with non-specific platitudes. But if you have a product that few people really know and understand you need to take a different approach. If you want to tell your customers about your product and get valuable feedback in return, both in opinion and sales (the only feedback that really matters). You have to be telling your story online. And you have to do it a very specific way (that happens to be different than the way that big brands do it).
And another thing, you don’t have to be telling YOUR story, you have to be telling their story, the story of the customer, and show them how your product makes their story a much better story with a happier ending and a much more interesting beginning and middle. The keys are simple and they are all things that Apple no longer needs to do.
First, understand the need that your product solves and the benefit of using the product. Don’t confuse features for benefits. Don’t spend time telling your customers about buttons and materials. Tell them one very clear and specific way that your product with make their life better. Even in a two or three-minute ad you really only have time for one big brand promise.
Second, be enjoyable. Your ad doesn’t have to be hilarious, it doesn’t have to be earthshattering, it has to be palatable. Think about the people at a party, the guy who is trying to hard doesn’t win any friends, nor does the guy that is too cool to talk to anyone at the party. The social butterfly is the one that is just clever enough, bright but not overbearing, and knows how much is interesting and when to move on. Your ad needs to be that guy (or that girl). Assuming that you’ve been to a party, you know that the person that lights up the room is not the most attractive, but the one who knows how to talk to people.
Lastly, your ad needs to do something that Nike and Apple never do. You need a clear call to action. You need an invitation to act. Nike, Apple and Coke can fill people with desire because you are never more that a mile away from someone who will do the sale for them. You don’t have that luxury. “Click here to buy”, “Give us your email and we’ll give you a call”. The shorter you can make the path to customer conversion, the faster you will gain on companies like Apple.
I love the new Apple ad, at Creatably, we have a saying, “There is no better set dresser than Mother Nature” and Apple knows it. There are lessons that any company can learn from Apple, but there is much more that you can do by advertising differently than Apple. We have another adage at Creatably, “It’s expensive to be ‘cool’, but it’s much less expensive and far more profitable to be ‘useful’”. If you can be useful to your customers through your advertising you will be one step closer to becoming the type of company that can send cameras all over the world just to show them how cool you are.
