I swear to you, I pulled up this new ad for the iPad mini on YouTube, and before I even managed to put in my earbuds, I said to myself, "Those two iPads had better not be playing 'Heart and Soul.' "
Here's a question: How long will it be before the iPhone is taken off the market briefly and reintroduced as the iPad nano? Will they have to redo this spot as a Bach trio? One hopes. Baroque music is awesome.
What is more awesome, though, is that Apple has managed to sell what is basically a much larger iPod touch in not one but two different sizes and somehow the response has not been "That's just the same product three times!" but instead "How many of these am I allowed to buy?" If there were ever direct proof that, to quote Marshall McLuhan, invention is the mother of necessity, the iPad is it.
And of course, the success is partly due to Apple's unbelievably skilled marketing apparatus, which takes one look at Microsoft's Busby-Berkeley-meets-electronica ad for the Surface and runs fast in the opposite direction. Take a look at the two spots side by side—they appear to be making fun of each other.
The Microsoft spot is 100 percent flash and filmmaking and overstatement—it's obviously a product that will cure cancer, put mankind on Mars and bring peace to the Middle East. The Apple spot is about a product that is just … well, it's just adorable, isn't it? Also, some of our readers have uncharitably (but entirely correctly) pointed out that the, uh, surface of the Surface appears to be covered in fingerprints in the very last shot of the Microsoft spot—something that would probably cost two managers and a vp their jobs if it happened at Apple. (Seriously, does anyone wonder why Disney and Apple get along so well? OCD is a very effective marketing strategy.)
The iPad mini, here, is simple. It's clean. It makes sense. It's kind of funny. It's perfect.
Just like the iPhone 5.
CREDITS
Client: Apple
Spot: "Piano"
Agency: TBWA\Media Arts Lab
Chief Creative Officer: Duncan Milner
Executive Creative Director: Eric Grunbaum
Creative Directors: Simon Cassels, Jon Lancaric
Art Director: Luke Martin
Copywriter: Chris Trumbull
Executive Producer: Mike Refuerzo
Agency Producers: Hank Zakroff, Mallory Gordon, Tessa Kocourek, Christina Villaflor
Production Company: Green Dot FIlms
Directors: Mark Coppos, Rebecca Baehler
Director of Photography: Fernando Cardenas
Editorial Company: Nomad Editing
Editor: Jenny Mogen
Postproduction Company: D-Train
Lead Flame Artist: Ben Gibbs
