The new Apple airpods ad... what's all the singing & dancing about?

So Spike Jonze - one of my favorite filmmakers of the ‘00s - has dropped another commercial.

This one is for Apple airpods. 

It’s no Being John Malkovich. It’s not even an adidas One level cm, but it is way better than anything Apple has produced for a few years.

Well, technically.

It terms of messaging there's an over reliance on “story” and continuity, and a lack of product fetishization. The story it seems to be telling is one of a company that has milked a captive audience for 20 years and failed to evolve.

I mean, people like the Apple Watch and Apple AirPods, but there’s no category dominance with these products as there is with the iPhone or was with the iPod. These are just high mark up, you could make do with Sony or Galaxy or Xiaomi type objects.

So, the ad:

Pedro Pascal has just been told something off camera by a woman in a cafe- it's either “I’m leaving you for another woman” or “I hated you in Gladiator II” - it really doesn’t matter what because he has music, and airpods and by god he was going to dance down the street in his head anyway.

Passersby get coopted into the dance routines and have their clothes change colour. Because this product is colorless but brings color to to your dreary life etc.

With it’s refined cinematography, seamless hoodie colorization,  and a B+ (A-?) level star at the centre of proceedings it should be a homerun … only, it isn’t.

It underscores the sense that Apple is out of touch with the world.

Unfortunately, the word I think of when I watch the ad is “waste”. 

Why is Apple still flogging generic overpriced products?

How can Pedro not dance in his head with wired headphones or with cooler black, Sony earbuds?

How have these little overpriced lithium celled trash can fillers become a star product? 

Why isn’t Spike Jonze making films anymore?

And aren’t there better songs to hallucinate to?

That last one is critical. Apple is finding it tough to play to fractured audience tastes. They must have data on their Apple Music subscribers tastes, but the 2 tracks here lack any wtf-ness. 

They aren’t Feist’s 1234 which Apple used to effectively create fomo in 30secs for the iPod nano a lifetime ago with an ad that put the product centre stage. 

This dance routine feels like a gutless, more production tech/ less heart imitation of Bjork’s It’s Oh So Quiet music video, or a simulacra of Jonze’s brilliant Kenzo World cm with Margaret Qualley a decade ago (talk about finding the right talents and approach for a brand/ ad).

More importantly (cos this is an airpods ad) all these color morphs make me wonder even more why Apple have only ever released their overpriced and underwhelming cables, earbuds and power packs exclusively in white?

I’m betting economies of scale at the factory, but I’m one of those people who always bought the third-party black accessories to match the industrial look of my macbook.

And cos they lasted 4x longer and cost 1/3 as much.

In short: what is all Pedro’s singing and dancing about?

It’s tough being a trillion dollar company because the appetite for risk and innovation just isn’t there anymore, but can’t you think of anything better to charge $300 for, Apple?

These things have the shortest half-life of any product Apple have ever released and all that dancing and weird walking Pedro does probably meant 30 of those little white bastards were dropped & trashed in the making of this spot.

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