An advert by Apple for its new iPad tablet showing musical instruments, artistic tools, and games being crushed by a giant hydraulic press has been attacked for cultural insensitivity in an online backlash.
Advertising industry executives argued the ad represented a mis-step for the Silicon Valley giant, which under late co-founder Steve Jobs was lauded for its ability to capture consumer attention through past campaigns.
Christopher Slevin, creative director for marketing agency Inkling Culture, compared the iPad ad unfavorably to a famous Apple campaign directed by Ridley Scott called “1984” for the original Macintosh computer, which positioned Apple as liberating a dystopian, monochrome world.
Actor Hugh Grant accused Apple of “the destruction of the human experience courtesy of Silicon Valley” on X.
However, Richard Exon, founder of marketing agency Joint, said: “A more important question is: does the ad do its job?
Nataly Kelly, chief marketing officer at Zappi, said: “Is the Apple iPad ad a work of genius or the sign of the dystopian times?
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