The saccharine Apple Watch dreamworld lives on.
To show how the high-tech timepiece can make each day more perfect, the marketer just released eight new 15-second ads. Celebrities star in four of them, with Chloë Sevigny returning for her second appearance in the series. Alice Cooper, Nick Jonas and Jon Batiste join her this time, each demonstrating the upside of having a miniature supercomputer on your wrist.
Fitness is a recurring theme, taking up half of the spots. The best might be Cooper's, a quirky slice of life in which he swings futilely at golf balls (he's a golf enthusiast in real life)—but in the end settles for burning some calories, as measured by his watch.
If you're more like Nick Jonas, you might find yourself running around and panting while perpetually trying to catch up with your older brother Joe. Thankfully, you now have data to quantify that state of being constantly behind, which started the minute you were born.
Two spots feature less famous actors working out. In one, a woman runs up an endless white staircase, racing against her friend in a visual setting that risks coming across as an uncomfortably apt, if melodramatic, metaphor for life.
In another, a woman presses through a grueling rowing workout, with some positive reinforcement from the robot attached to her arm.
The other ads extend that playful tone to a broader set of scenarios. Sevigny loses her phone in a scattered pile of fashionable clothes (exactly where she left off in her last Apple Watch ad, down to the same dress she's wearing). Luckily, the watch enables her to trigger a beep from the missing device.
Meanwhile, Batiste fields text messages from Quincy Jones, telling him to dress down for an event. He obliges—by switching to a pink rubber watch band (and keeping the suit).
If you're more of the smug superior type, you might enjoy the zen experienced by a woman who hoists her umbrella up at just the right moment, smiling while the clueless, ill-prepared suckers around her scatter in the rain.
Lastly, a more socially adept woman uses her watch to coordinate a surprise party for her friend, switching the lights off in her purple living room with a tap of her wrist.
Like the earlier ads in the campaign—which featured celebrities like Leon Bridges and RZA—these are deft, beautiful little pieces of persuasion. Apple masterfully blends utility and fashion; more so with this product than most, it illustrates how it can make your life easier (and prettier).
What's worrisome is that the ads' atomized, almost isolationist aesthetic, which felt disconcerting at first, now seems totally normal—even appealing. What is the endgame, if not a sleek minimalist lifestyle wrapped in the soft glow of a frictionless existence?
The answer: Do what you want with who you want, when you want, and avoid the rest.