Why Apple’s iPad Ad Fell Flat: Company Failed to Understand It Conjured Fears of ‘Tech Kind of Destroying Humanity’

variety.com:

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Apple misread the room. Long seen as the gold standard in marketing, the tech giant did a face-plant with its ad for the new iPad Pro tablet.

The 60-second spot shows a massive hydraulic press literally crushing an array of objects — including a record player, a piano, a guitar, an old TV set, cameras, a typewriter, books, paint cans and tubes, and a classic arcade machine — and compressing them into (voilà!) the ultrathin iPad Pro. “Just imagine all the things it’ll be used to create,” Apple CEO Tim Cook cheerily posted on X along with the ad.

The commercial was meant to be whimsical and clever. It was instantly panned. “The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley,” actor Hugh Grant posted on X. “Disgusting,” a columnist for tech-news site TechCrunch wrote.

Why did Apple’s ad, created by its in-house creative team, prompt such visceral reactions? Somehow, the company failed to understand the disturbing implications of showing a soulless piece of machinery eradicating iconic symbols of creativity, says Americus Reed II, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.