Destruction of all creative tools and means that encourage culture in exchange for the hypervaluation of advanced machines and technologies. From this, I propose a dynamic: is the scenario I just reported a synopsis of a dystopian film or is it the description of a promotional video from a real company? The answer may shock you!
In a recent announcement by Apple To promote its new and thinnest device, the iPad Pro, the American brand created a situation that reinforced one of the most serious problems that professionals in the creative sector are currently facing: the devaluation of work in the face of the rise of advanced technologies.
Check out Apple CEO Tim Cook’s post with the announcement:
Meet the new iPad Pro: the thinnest product we’ve ever created, the most advanced display we’ve ever produced, with the incredible power of the M4 chip. Just imagine all the things it’ll be used to create. pic.twitter.com/6PeGXNoKgG
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) May 7, 2024
In the video, titled ‘Crush!’ (from English, “Smash!”), an industrial compressor breaks down various objects that stimulate creativity, such as a piano, paints, toys, books, video games and a guitar (keep the last one, as it will be important). When faced with the new iPad Pro, a device made up of OLED screens and an M4 chipset, the compressor retracts to avoid hitting the device, leaving it alone in the middle of a scene with destroyed objects.
The publication of the ad provoked the anger of several creative workers and Internet users, who commented that Apple was being inconsistent with its own legacy. Check out the post below:
Forty years ago, Apple released the 1984 commercial as a bold statement against a dystopian future. Now you are that dystopian future. Congratulations.
— Yuval Kordov (@YuvalKordov) May 8, 2024
“Forty years ago, Apple released the 1984 commercial as a bold statement against a dystopian future. Now you are that dystopian future. Congratulations”, commented a user in a tone of indignation with the video.
Despite the revolt from part of the creative sector, some professionals viewed the commercial differently, believing that Apple was not promoting the literal destruction of human creativity.
Even so, after the incident, Apple acknowledged its own gaffe and published an apology, declaring that it “lost its aim” and that it would not show the video on television.
All this controversy is a problem worthy of a long reflection on its own, however, at this point, it is worth analyzing that Apple’s real mistake as a large company was forgetting that situations like this are tragicomic enough to provide all of its rivals with material to satire, making them profit from Apple’s mistake. And it was exactly that his archenemy, the Samsung, he did. Check it out below:
We would never crush creativity. #UnCrush pic.twitter.com/qvlUqbRlnE
— Samsung Mobile US (@SamsungMobileUS) May 15, 2024
The South Korean company launched the ad ‘Uncrushed’ (in free translation, “Do not crush”), where we are presented with a scenario similar to that in the Apple video, where objects that stimulate creativity were destroyed by the industrial compressor and find themselves scattered everywhere. However, amid the destruction, a woman approaches a partially deteriorated guitar and starts playing a song while reading the sheet music on the Galaxy Tab S9 Series, Samsung’s new tablet.
If that wasn’t already enough to satirize the faux pas committed by Apple, the video, which showed the importance of creativity for well-thought-out marketing, is crowned with the phrase “creativity cannot be crushed”, as a provocation to the Tim Cook’s company.
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