The initial failure of iAds is a tale of Apple’s attitude and arrogance. The introduction of this new ad medium was heavy-handed.
Three fashionably dressed hotties showed up at our offices, whipped open their MacBooks and laid out the take-it or leave-it value proposition --- pay us a minimum of a million bucks, create what we tell you to create within a very constrained technology environment and then shut up and be grateful.
Does it surprise anyone that brands and their agencies didn’t rally to this?
Apple’s reps asserted that iPad users were smarter, richer, more likely to share and buy than the average Joe. That brands could micro-target using rich data from the iTunes app store. They suggested that those who didn’t get in early on this amazing deal like Target, Unilever and Geico did, or you’d be left in the dust.
Of course, there was no data to support or document these claims other than the hockey stick sales curve for iPads. There was also a clear suggestion that since Apple invented the platform and since Apple ran the famous “1984” ad, they knew much better than brands or agencies who to talk to, what to say and how to express it on the new tablet landscape.
A year later, many brands have tried it. Revenues are way off projections. And brands are under-impressed with both the creative canvass, the targeting options and customer response. Marketers have also figured out that iAd creative is one-system only requiring additional, costly creative and technical resources where the cost/return ratio is out of whack.
Couple that with emerging customer usage patterns that suggest iPads are primarily entertainment vehicles supporting TV and movie watching, games and social media. These are behaviors and attitudinal inflection points only open to a finite number of brands and campaigns and virtually force advertisers to intrude on customers and prospects.. The promised creative bonanza has not materialized and while rep visits to agencies has increased, interest in iAds hasn’t.
Apple isn’t the first Internet giant to break into the market with a bull-in-a-china-shop profile. But it could be the first to eat some humble pie, re-tool, re-think and re-stage their approach to the advertising and marketing community.
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Posted by: pandora | January 02, 2012 at 10:58 PM