Apple thinking big in new iPad ad

Published January 20, 2014 at 7:43 am

We’re not surprised these days when Apple, one of the most recognizable companies on the planet, shoots for the moon in its advertising. So much about the company has taken on a larger-than-life quality, from the mythical image of Steve Jobs as a flawed genius to the continuing drama surrounding the company’s products, culture and leadership.

Apple is known for using all of this grandness to its advantage, both in ambitious product designs and in large-scale ads like the “Your Verse Anthem” series that’s currently on the airwaves.

To promote the brand’s upcoming “iPad Air,” a minute-long video once again enforces the themes that the company has tried to focus on with its user-centered campaign, using images from various settings to show the versatility of the technology.

It uses a monologue voice-over from the film “Dead Poets Society” read by Robin Williams to drive home how important the user is and why this product represents a potential opening up of possibilities for them. Writing for CNet, Chris Matysczyk asserts that this is a step in the right direction that humanizes the monolith.

“It is, perhaps, an expression of confidence that Apple has decided to enter 2014 with not only a statement of intent but a re-statement of some feelings that some had thought lost,” he writes.

Gussying up ads in colorful images of art and globalism isn’t new, not even for Apple, but that’s partly why this ad is so interesting: it builds on previously established sentiments from the company while taking a slightly different turn.

Whatever your opinions on this, some of Apple’s gambits have clearly paid off in the past, so it will be interesting to see what the result of this one is.