Apple's "Your Verse" commercial, which rolled out 10 days ago, was a pretty nice start to 2014 for the company's marketing. The 90-second spot, advertising the iPad, is great to look at, and has an inspired—if borrowed—message. It's been airing all over and generally getting an enthusiastic response.
On Wednesday, Apple rolled out two 30-second cutdowns of the spot, titled "Light Verse" and "Sound Verse" (see both below). They carry the same Robin Williams voiceover, just truncated to focus on the Whitman quotes. More interesting, though, is the "Your Verse" page on the Apple website, which goes into greater depth about the people featured in the ad—and how they use the iPad in real life.
Marine biologist Michael Berumen, mountaineers Emily Harrington and Adrian Ballinger, Bollywood choreographer Feroz Khan, rock band Yao, New York filmmaker Josh Apter, the Los Angeles Kings hockey team—there are sections devoted to each. Berumen gets a lengthy and fascinating profile, in which it's revealed that he and his team developed an "iDive" iPad case that lets you take iPad deep under water. (Well, not you specifically. A footnote clarifies: "iDive housing is currently not available for sale.")
Apple did a similar thing with its "Life on iPad" campaign in the fall. The difference is, those stories expounded on the characters in an online spot. (The TV spot at the time was "Pencil" with the Bryan Cranston voiceover.) The "Your Verse" content online is connected to a better-known broadcast ad. In all, it's a solid content play backing up more evocative, less info-heavy broadcast work.
On another note, could we see Apple in the Super Bowl this year? It is the 30th anniversary of "1984," after all, and Lee Clow has been dropping hints.
Gonna be a goodSuper Bowl. Mac's gonna be 30 :)
— Lee Clow (@_clow) January 20, 2014