Neela Saldanha
“But these are not practical items to begin with. Nobody owns a piano because it’s practical; it’s about the least practical thing you can own. It can wreck your floor. It goes out of tune. And if you happen to get a new place, you don’t just need movers for it; you may need special movers. You don’t own a piano to get from point A to point B in the most direct way you can. You own a piano for the reason we had one in my house: a person plays it. Someone sits down, as my mother did, and plays the “Maple Leaf Rag,” and you can hear the pedals lightly squeak, and you can watch hands skitter across keys, and of course you are listening to music — but also, those are your mother’s hands.”
This NPR article by Linda Holmes beautifully explains what went wrong with the new Apple ad. Read the whole thing.
I am not the first to comment that Apple’s 1984 Macintosh ad was the exact opposite of this (and in our book “Marketplace Dignity” Cait Lamberton, Tom Wein and I in fact, call this ad out for its respect for human dignity). It started with endless sea of grey faced automatons, from which a heroine emerged – a single, amazing human who smashed the automatons, and showed us the way out of an potential machine Orwellian nightmare. Tech in service to, not dominating, the human spirit.
Ironically, if Apple’s new ad were to be reversed, it becomes a MUCH better and more powerful ad. There are several versions – do watch the one at the foot of this post.
Humans have dignity. We want to be seen and heard (representation), to exercise our curiosity and talents (agency). And we want to do it with our own tools and brands – our creaky pianos and messy paintbrushes and torn dancing shoes, and yes, our iPads. Brands exist to serve our desires, not the other way around.
Marketplace Dignity 