The Evolution of Apple's Advertising

Above is the first Apple commercial, deemed one of the best advertisements ever created. Its very cinematic and different from the style of Apple ads we're used to seeing, although very effective in advertising its first "Macintosh Computer". This is an example of pioneering advertising.

In the late 90's this ad debuted, the first of many very stripped down ads that focused more on brand awareness than promoting a specific product. This is an excellent example of competitive advertising because although it offers very little information, it persuades the consumer that this product will make them "different" in some way, and the dominant logo helps promote the brand in general, even though at the time only the Macintosh computer was available.

With the introduction of the iPod, they stripped their advertisements down even further to not include a slogan or even the logo, only the white iPod against a black silhouette, which quickly became iconic.

Apple has also launched many successful advertising campaigns around the objective of getting PC users to switch to Mac. The initial "Switch" campaign utilized celebrities who had made the "switch" to Mac but it was only somewhat effective. They later revamped the idea of "switching" with the "Get A Mac" campaign which pitted a person representing a PC against someone representing Mac in a comical and extremely effective set of 24 commercials, in each showing a different feature that Mac does better.

Since these founding campaigns, where each product was marketed different with different styles of campaigns, Apple has decided to take on a concept of brand unity by advertising all products in a similar fashion as well as planning a redesign of all product in each products next release.

iphone

ipad

mac book air

ipod nano 

ipod touch

As you can see each advertisement features the product predominantly and its features rather than any elaborate script such as that of the original "1984" ad.

Apple's Most recent and possibly most successful endeavor is the launch of the iPad 2. It utilized both styles of recent Apple advertisements where the product is being demonstrated against a plain white background, as well as the iPads many different uses in a flash of various everyday backgrounds and situations. The later style created advertising appeal which more consumers can relate to as it allows them to picture themselves using the product in any of the situations shown.