Apple hilariously pulls new iPad ad because of internet moans

Apple has long been obsessed with the thinness of its products, for some reason, and it apparently managed to shave a fraction of a millimetre from the girth of its latest one. Some bright spark in its in-house marketing department decided to illustrate this concept through the metaphor of an industrial press, crushing various analogue creative tools into a wafer. You can see what they were trying to do – to indicate that all that cool stuff is now contained in this single, really thin, device.

The main aesthetic problem with the ad is that it seems to take protracted relish in the crushing of things like musical instruments, games machines and even books. It might have still been possible to give Apple the benefit of the doubt and say the metaphor was about compressing all these cool things into one device if the ad wasn’t bafflingly named ‘Crush!’ by Apple itself.

An additional problem is that the metaphor could instead be interpreted as Apple crushing creative people by forcing them onto its platforms, and thus rapaciously extracting rent from their labour, through its dominance of the digital domain. Not a great look for a company that was presumably trying to position its product as a creative enabler.

But the reaction to the ad has been extreme, bordering on hysterical. ‘Apple doesn’t understand why you use technology’ wrote the Verge, ‘Apple apologizes for its tone-deaf ad that crushed human creativity to make an iPad’ wrote Engadget, ‘Apple’s ‘Crush’ ad is disgusting’ wrote TechCrunch. Many commenters have also noted that the concept seems to rip-off one used by LG in 2008 and that the message would have been less jarring if the whole thing were run in reverse.

Tor Myhren, Apple’s VP of marketing communications, gave AdAge the following statement: “Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world. Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.” Plans to buy TV ad slots for it have now been scrapped, AdAge reports.

While it’s understandable for Apple to bravely run away in the face of this feedback, it’s hilarious that, apparently, nobody at the company flagged up this potential objection at any stage before the ad was inflicted on the unsuspecting public. Did nobody in one of the world’s most dominant companies question whether leaning into the concept of crushing, in its literal rather than slang sense, was a great idea?

Schadenfreude aside, it’s nice to see that even the most apparently imperious companies are just as susceptible to screwing up as the rest of us. Of course, Apple could have just ridden out the ephemeral internet drama but it seems to lack the capacity for nuanced interaction with the communications ecosystem. If its attempt at slick above-the-line marketing fails, there’s no plan B. Apple has a famously muted, capricious, and vindictive approach to PR but there’s little hope this experience will change that.