Apple has used a variety of distinctive advertising campaigns to promote its iPod portable digital music player. The campaigns include television commercials, print ads, posters in public places, and wrap advertising campaigns. All of these advertising techniques are unified by a distinctive, consistent style that differs from their other ads.
Style
The more famous commercials and print advertising featured dark silhouetted characters against bright-coloured backgrounds. The silhouettes are usually dancing, and in television commercials are backed by up-beat music. The silhouettes are also usually holding iPods and listening to them with Apple’s supplied earphones. These distinctively appear in white, so that they stand out against the colored background and black silhouettes. Apple seems to change the style of these commercials quite often depending on the song’s theme or genre.
The original television commercials and posters featured solid black silhouettes against a solid bright color, which usually changed every time the camera angle changed. Some of the television adverts also depicted highlights on the silhouettes using darkened shades of the background color, and shadows on the floor. Since then, various commercials in the campaign have changed the format further:
* One live action TV commercial made reference to the silhouette theme to emphasize its icon status. It involved a man walking past a set of silhouette posters, which came to life and danced when his iPod was playing, but froze when he paused it.
* In October 2004, an advert featured U2 performing their single, “Vertigo” as opposed to people dancing, to promote the release of the iPod U2 Special Edition. Because this edition was not white, iPods did not feature in the advert, but the microphone and guitar leads appeared in white instead. The band and the rest of their equipment were in silhouette, but with particularly clear highlights.
* The TV commercials for the iPod shuffle used a green background with black arrows moving in the background representing the “shuffle” icon. The silhouettes danced on top of the arrows as if they were a moving floor while listening to iPod shuffles hanging from white lanyards.
* Following the release of the fifth-generation iPod, two TV commercials, one featuring Eminem and the other Wynton
Marsalis, made radical changes to the style, by exchanging the solid changing backgrounds for abstract composite backgrounds based around a main color (orange and blue respectively). The camera shots alternate between the artists
performing their songs (Eminem sporting a white microphone, Marsalis’ drummer sporting white drumsticks) and traditional silhouette dancers listening to iPods. The solid silhouette were also traded for a more varied silhouette, which shows certain facial features of a person. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has suggested that this more complex composition will be the style of future commercials as well.
* In early 2006 a new type of iPod commercial was released. It was thirty seconds, and it spotlighted album art. The album art was constructed into a city, and then dismantled and it flowed into an iPod nano and said “1,000 songs in your pocket”, the slogan for the 1st Generation iPod.
* In August 2006, another reimagining of the iPod commercial was introduced through an ad for Bob Dylan’s album available in the music store, Modern Times. In this new style, the only silhouette facet of it was that it seemed lighting was reduced on the figure of Bob Dylan and the female dancer, while the iPod was brightened. Color variation, as well as reflection on the face of the guitar, is evident. The ad is much more realistic and the people, as well as details, are much more visible. This ad was an almost complete departure from the traditional, and even the Eminem-styled adverts of the past.
* In September of 2006, Apple once again reimagined their vision of the silhouette ad campaign to go with the new iPod nano aluminum case. They made a departure from the contrasting background and characters. Both the characters and the background are thrown into deeper shadow than we’ve ever seen before, and, in order to showcase the new colors of the nano, the characters swing their nanos around while dancing, which leaves a luminescent light trail.
* In November of 2006 Apple used their original style again in their Latino TV Ad.
* As of Macworld 2007, Apple debuted their new ad campaign, featuring a reverse color scheme of previous campaigns: Colored silhouettes on a black background, as well as a second styled ad featuring colored silhouettes amongst a dynamic, moving and multi-colored background.
* In May 2007, Apple reimagined their commercial again with a commercial for the song Mi Swing Es Tropical by Nickodemus & Quantic featuring Tempo, This commercial used watercolor textures and canvas for the backgrounds, and overlayed was video of outdoors scenery, The characters were also changed, being that they masked another texture or object within the silhouette.
* In June of 2007, a brighter version featured Paul McCartney strumming a mandolin performing his song “Dance Tonight” being very much like an updated version of the Eminem commercial, having backdrops of buildings and featuring Paul McCartney walking with animations of shapes around him.
* During Macworld 2007, There was a new iPod Shuffle commercial. It featured people showing off the clip that came with the second generation iPod shuffle. They attached the clip to different clothing while the color of the iPod also changed.
Influence on pop culture
* MAD Magazine - In the Series of Unfortunate Events movie spoof, Lemony Snicket is always shown in shadow (as is the case with the movie). In one panel of the spoof, he is shown with an iPod. In the MAD March 2006 issue the cover was a parody of the iPod silhouette ad and inside there were panels that spoofed the silhouettes.
* On the Family Guy episode, “Petarded”, Peter laments that losing the kids because of his mental retardation was worse than when Stewie starred in an iPod commercial. The next scene shows Stewie dancing to Scandal’s “The Warrior” in the same style as the people in the iPod commercials.
* An episode of Weebl and Bob (”Piepod”) shows them dancing in the style used in the advert.
* In the episode of The Simpsons ‘Thank God It’s Doomsday’, a poster on the wall of the Christian shop Homer visits displays a silhouette of God wearing an iPod. The caption reads ‘iGod’, and is a clear reference to the advertisements.
* In Stephen Colbert’s first Green Screen Challenge, an entry included Stephen Colbert dancing on a colored background
with a white iPod in his hand.
* In a Season 12 episode of MADtv, they introduced an “iRack” to hold iPod accessories; and also the “iRan.” These were relating to the issues of United States in Iraq and Iran, but poked fun at Apple nonetheless. They also made an “iPad”-skit.
* The website http://ipopmyphoto.com popularized by Wired magazine as consumer evangelism, allows iPod fans to create custom iPod ads from their personal photos.
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