Tag Archives: Apple

Commercial Renewal Project: Apple AirPods (2019): “Share your magic”

“Stroll” as the commercial’s name might hint, portrays an Airpods user aloof in his own music, strolling along the street with rhythmic movements. This particular ad’s visual style is captured in a beautiful manner that gives off the impression of a film like quality.

Although it may seem questionable to as why we chose this specific commercial, but underneath all the fancy visual style it displays, we realized that it lacks two major aspects. One that it didn’t give full sight on the main product, the Airpods, and second that in the ad itself it failed to persuade the viewers to the purchasing level.

Throughout most of the commercial, even though it uses a colorless scheme to emphasize the white earphones, the attention of the viewers is quickly taken away due to the dancing and ironically more on the white shoes of the Airpods user. Hence confusing the viewers on what the main item is for the ad. Also along with the confusion, it lacks the persuasion for the consumer to the point where they actually buy the product. It is so by not elaborating on the ‘wireless’ aspect (the innovative part of the product) and not making it relevant for the consumer to identify the product within their lives.

Taking account these factors we focused the objective of increasing market share by using a more effective strategy and tactic through our commercial. Since this is a relatively new industry, in order to increase the market share of this sector we concluded that taking a hold of the regular earphone users and having them flow into Airpods’ market share would be the best strategy. To do so we focused our tactic on persuading the regular earphone users by demonstrating how the wireless feature of this product is relevant for them to have an ease when doing things in their everyday lives. 

We focused on showing a slice of life aspect in our commercial through the demonstration of using the product. This is to persuade the viewers that this product is truly something that they need up front and first hand. We did so by using down to earth situations and show them that they could be applied to them as well. Also by using a split screen throughout the commercial we wanted to show a direct comparison of using Airpods and not. We thought that this would be a good way to straightly point out the differences of these two.

As for the slogan, we pondered about what would grasp the essence of what we know as Apple which is simple but has a significant meaning. So coming from the original slogan “Practically Magic” that sparked our inspiration, we came up with the slogan “Share your magic”. We thought that the whole wireless experience is somewhat of a magic that fits in with the last scene of our film and it implies to our viewers to share on this experience as well.

Written by Hyunkyung Kim, Jina Shim, Jieun Kwon, Hohyun Shin, and Seungbin Baek | Marketing Communication 2019 Fall | College of Business Administration, Kookmin University


There are behind-the-scenes of the renewed commercial.

Apple logo-shaped fried rice

I ordered a fried rice after having BBQ at a local restaurant in Korea. Interestingly, She first shaped the fried rice like an apple and then placed a small fried cake on top to make it look like the Apple logo. (What if I am a fan of MicroSoft? :)) Strong brands such as Harley-Davidson and Nike seem to induce people to express their brand loyalty aggressively (e.g., tattoo). Soft brands such as Apple, however, seem to nudge their fans to express their brand loyalty more creatively or softly.

DML_Apple-shaped fried rice

Microsoft Store vs. Apple Store

I recently visited a MicroSoft Store in a shopping mall in Toronto. My first impression was that it looks highly similar to the Apple Store. For instance, the MS Store places a simple logo outside, displays a wide variety of working devices on the tables, and has many assistants wearing blue (!) T-shirts. However, many visitors in the MS Store spent their time on playing gesture-recognition X-BOX video games. Only few paid attention to the physical devices and virtually none of them had any conversation with the MS assistants.

DesignMarketingLab

DesignMarketingLab

Different from the MS Store, the Apple Store in the same shopping mall had more visitors who played with the working device on the tables or who had a conversation with the assistants. At the surface level, the visitors and the assistants in the MS store “played together” whereas, in the Apple store, they “communicated each other.” However, more importantly, the MS Store needs something unique rather than copying its competitor. Otherwise, it might follow what Sony showed after it opened Sony Stores. 

DesignMarketingLab

DesignMarketingLab

Apple and Samsung took different approaches toward design thinking

The article presents research focusing on the development of design thinking in business context. It utilizes balancing intuitive and analytical thinking to determine the exploitation of design thinking in organizations. It explores the decision making processes of two electronic corporations including Apple Inc., and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. to offer practical implications to executives who are interested in implementing design thinking in their organizations.

… Samsung is a good example of a “technology push” firm. Samsung has been a late mover in the electronics market. Responding to unparalleled business challenges, the company first expanded its design team from 200 designers in the late 1990s to 1000 designers in 2012. Samsung has made noticeable debuts in winning several international design awards. However, the company’s intuitive and analytic teams needed to work closely before they were able to deeply understand and appreciate each other’s way of working. The forced collaboration produced challenging decision-making conflicts—the types of conflicts that are difficult to resolve without a moderator. Instead, decisions were made exclusively by the intuitive team or exclusively by the analytic team. This issue explains why Samsung has performed well in design awards, but has not yet introduced an iconic product like the iPhone…

… Apple approaches design thinking differently from Samsung. Its design team does not communicate with its manufacturing team. Instead, an independent team (consisting of Steve Jobs and his supporters) made most of the firm’s business decisions. In the process, Jobs limited the decision-making power of the analytic teams in order for them to be comparable with the power of the intuitive team. Note that although Steve Jobs was often criticized for his assertive decisions, he did free the intuitive team from the analytic team. As a result, Apple products are welcomed by a massive number of consumers—even though their individual features do not necessarily outperform the products manufactured by their competitors …