Sean Oliver totally nails what's wrong with Apple's latest advertisements, outlining why they miss the mark both for Apple fans ... as well as everybody else:
I’ve alluded to this a little already, but the most important thing missing from this ad is that there’s absolutely zero payoff. No moral. No happy ending. Nothing to tell the consumer what they should take away and do next. They don’t even explain that these “friendly” Geniuses can be found right by where you live at your local Apple Store. This is a product ad targeted at people who don’t know anything about the product, and Apple fails in the most fundamental way by not telling them anything about it or even where to buy it.
And he thinks he knows why:
Collateral like this happens when there is no creative vision coming down from senior leaders. When leaders delegate the vision downward, middle managers end up having to make the final call, but in almost all cases they don’t have the power to do so alone. So, they go about securing buy-off from multiple teams, and the result was leadership by committee. Not exactly the Apple way.