Before you condemn Apple again... | Hacker News Reader

Before you condemn Apple again...

blog.wells.ee

9 pointswells-riley6 comments

So basically, before you condemn Apple, remember all the good ads they had before? All the ads they had with a real point, showing something that was clear to the viewer?

The reason Apple is being condemned right now is because this ad isn't a Think Different ad. It isn't a Here's to the Crazy Ones. It isn't a Mac vs PC. It's not memorable, it's not unique, it's not defining a culture. It's simply an ad. That's very un-Apple.

Maybe before you defend Apple again, make sure they have a defensible position. "They had good ads in the past" is a non sequitur, and honestly if your argument is "yeah it's not good, but let's just forget about it", you might not be thinking clearly.

Apparently you weren't paying attention. Go look at the list of highlights below the video. The point was to illustrate that while we're remembering the great ads, Apple has had plenty of "bad" ads in the past. We just have selective memories.

Look at the ads in question though. G3? G4? Powerbook? Cube? Yes, these might be Steve era ads, but they're far from recent or relevant. It's perfectly valid to call them out on bad ads, regardless of if they've made bad ads before. Just like "it was better in the past" isn't an argument, "it was just as bad in the past" still does not follow. It may have been just as bad in the past, but it was also better in the past. The link between the two is, it's not good now.

No, the opposite. Before you condemn Apple, remember that bad ads are nothing new for them.

You should read these things before you comment on them.

Did you read it? No where does the author say "Apple makes bad ads". He said Jobs made cheesy, empty ads. "Genius" isn't a cheesy, empty ad. It's just bad. In an article that starts with "Apple makes great ads", continues onto "everyone else makes poor ads", reaches a conclusion of "Apple hasn't made a bad ad since the G4 and Powerbook were hot" and finishes with "Apple's advertising is getting worse, but you can't blame them for that", the last thing on my mind at the end was "Apple always has bad advertising". Because in the last 5-10 years, that just hasn't been true.

Nit: "marketing" is not a synonym for "advertising". Advertising is part of promotion, which is in turn part of marketing, but it is not the most important part of marketing (normally, that's pricing and market segmentation).

Steve Jobs was, by all appearances, a master marketer across the board. But Chiat\Day didn't do much of Apple's marketing work.

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