Volume 174: Apple, Crusher of Dreams.

1. Apple. Crusher of Dreams.

tl;dr: An ad that’s symbolic of a deeper malaise.

I rarely consider a single ad worth discussing. But, yeah. That new Apple iPad ad—whoever approved it should be summarily fired. No ifs, no buts. Gone.

Because they clearly haven’t got a good goddamn clue what the brand stands for. My critique is simple. Since the famous 1984 ad, Apple has whispered in all of our ears that it exists to break the creative classes free of an oppressive world of conformity. Unfortunately, this ad shatters 40 years’ worth of carefully constructed mythology by destroying creative things, like a turntable, guitars, paint, and...emojis. And, well, it really sucks.

It highlights destruction rather than creation. It makes Apple dark and industrial rather than wholesome, light, and aspirational. And it leaves us feeling loss and sadness about what’s been destroyed rather than excited by what replaces it.

Negative feelings that are then exacerbated by the ad acting as an unintentional metaphor for the destruction of the creative industries by generative AI. Tone deaf, meet Apple

It’s frighteningly obvious that someone tried to utilize the stylistic tropes of the famous 1984 ad without any sense of its underlying message. And if it’s meant to be satire, it’s a satire of the worst kind. The kind that takes itself far, far, too seriously.

However, this isn’t the truly dire part of the story. The dire part is that the ad merely reflects a company that’s running out of ideas.

The new iPad Pro is a dud. We know it's a dud because no matter how technically impressive it is, the best feature, not even a benefit, they could think of to drive its promotion is that it’s 5mm thin. This is literally ‘who gives a shit’ from a consumer perspective. It’s not like folks complained bitterly about how huge and clunky the old one was.

It’s product, not any ad, that shows why Apple is sliding. The products aren’t innovative or imagination-capturing enough. The iPhone 15 isn’t materially better than any of the past three generations, so sales are in decline. The Mac franchise has long been in decline, and the only meaningful thing you can say about the iPad is that it exists.

Yeah, the Vision Pro is a fait accompli as a hardware and software demonstrator, but it doesn’t look to have any commercial legs.

No, the best way to think about this ad isn’t just that it’s a truly appalling ad (Made almost perfect by watching in reverse btw) approved by a team of the clueless.

Nope. We should view this as a public display of fallibility from a corporation that appears to be moving decidedly in the wrong direction.

It’s a sad day when we look at Apple and see more innovation in the financial engineering it uses to maintain its stock price than we see in its products.

2. Prof G. States The Obvious. Still Gets it Wrong.

tl;dr: Beware those with universal theories of everything.

Thinking of products, an interesting thing happens when people begin sniffing the heady scent of their own fame. It overpowers them.

There was a time when Scott Galloway, AKA Prof G., provided a brilliant color commentary on the world around us. His apparent secret sauce was the ability to take complex, dry subjects, decode them through an interesting and contrarian lens, and then provide simple, pithy conclusions that informed, entertained, and helped shift perspectives. However, the true secret was that he came armed with receipts. Whoever used to be his researcher was truly brilliant. Bravo.

Then it changed. While his brilliance used to come with an easily ignorable side of bullshit, the bullshit steadily became the unavoidable main course.

What a shame.

Let’s put this in context. Prof G recently appeared on a marketing podcast. During it, he went on a rant he’s gone on before, which is to state that advertising is little more than a tax on a bad product, that brand building is dead (funny, since he teaches it), that true value is created from product excellence, that those firms that have created in excess of $100bn in market value don’t advertise very much, and that firms should be spending on R&D and innovation rather than advertising.

OK, fine. Sounds good as a soundbite. However, the statement is also easily, verifiably, and demonstrably false. Firms that have added in excess of $100bn in value do advertise. In fact, they advertise a lot.

However, what’s so frustrating is that his core point is actually quite important. Within a marketing universe rapidly devolving toward a discourse centered solely on advertising, he’s making the very simple and powerful point that product matters. In fact, it wasn’t so long ago that product was widely accepted as the most important of the 4Ps.

So what changed?

First, the marketing department ceased to be responsible for the marketing function, as defined by the 4Ps of the marketing mix. Instead of a 4Ps function, marketing became a 1P department centered on the promotional P.

Then, most recently, marketing science entered the ascendency within this narrowed marketing discourse, and marketing science only really deals with two of the 4Ps - Place, AKA “physical availability,” and Promotion, AKA “mental availability.”

So, I was initially heartened to see someone with the scale of his platform seek to forcefully re-establish the importance of product to marketers.

But then I watched and realized he was falling into exactly the same trap that marketing science already fell into. He isn’t just using clickbait falsehoods to make a point; he’s taking observations from one category and treating them as universal insights that work across all categories.

At one end of the spectrum, while he presents it as a blanket, universal statement covering all firms, Prof G is clearly focused on tech and science-centric categories with high gross margins and where significant R&D/innovation spend is a core part of competitive category dynamics. These categories also typically benefit from the legal protections and commensurate stock market rewards inherent in patents.

At the other end of the spectrum, while also attempting to present its theories as blanket and universal, marketing science is clearly focused on CPG categories, which have lower gross margins, where high advertising spend is a core part of category competitive dynamics, and where they benefit more from the legal protections inherent in trademarks than patents.

Now, let’s play a game to prove why neither of these theories is very good as a universal theory of everything.

If you took a major tech firm and reallocated all of the resources from R&D to advertising, a logical expectation is that the business would lose product relevance over time, fail to add to its valuable patent portfolio, and ultimately be beaten by more innovative and higher-R&D-spending competition. As a result, the company would bleed customers, and the stock market would punish it by selling and shorting its stock, leading to a potentially significant drop in market capitalization.

Equally, if you took a major CPG firm and reallocated all advertising spend to R&D, a logical expectation is that the business would lose brand relevance over time, fail to find breakthrough value in product innovation (how much better, or more disruptive, can a bottle of water become?), fail to protect its trademarks adequately, and ultimately be beaten by its competition. As a result, it would bleed customers, and the stock market would punish it by selling and shorting its stock, leading to a potentially significant drop in market capitalization.

While Prof G and the marketing scientists both pretend they have a widely applicable and universal theory of everything, this simple thought experiment demonstrates that neither does.

Prof G is merely (inaccurately) highlighting the relative weighting of the marketing mix within tech category dynamics, where the best management model has been figured out and optimized over time. Meanwhile, the marketing science community is merely (more accurately) highlighting the relative weighting of the marketing mix within CPG category dynamics with the same result.

So, when looking at either theory, we’re far better off starting out with the underlying dynamics of the category before deciding which brand of clickbait bullshit might be most applicable to our own situation.

So, yeah. Prof G. A purer merging of brilliance and bullshit you will rarely find. I just wish he’d return to being more of the former and less of the latter.

Oh, and if you want to see a stronger and more thoughtful analysis of his statements than I can provide, I thought this was very good.