Watch above or read below.

Matthew Burns:
I’m kind of pissed off, if I’m honest, about one specific advertiser that, for some gosh darn reason, we continuously show off their stuff because they’re really, really good at doing things. And that’s Apple.

Stephen Semple:
Yes.

Matthew Burns:
And this time for the iPhone specifically. And I wanted to just preface all of this by saying there were probably 10 or 15 of these ads that were run to describe how to easily transfer from your phone to the iPhone. Because they’re looking for more market share. And so I’m going to play one, and then we’ll talk, and I’ll probably just throw them up. We don’t need to hear much about them. It’s very visual, these ads. I’m going to play one right now, and then we can talk about how it works. So take a look at this.

 

And I chose this one first because I love the burglar. The thief dropping from the ceiling. Can’t get over it, he wants the iPhone. And he’s like, well, I have to settle for your phone. He takes your phone away… And talking about it being more secure. Anyway, I’m just saying, to me, that was funny.

Stephen Semple:
The one I liked, I know you didn’t show, but the one I liked is one about speed, and the person’s shoe comes off as they’re running.

Matthew Burns:
Okay, you know what? Stop, stop here, guys. Let’s watch Steve’s favorite. And the best part is the shoe is in slow motion until it gets to the iPhone side, and it goes quick again. Really, really smart, Apple. So anyway, the reason why I wanted to talk about this one is that it’s a very simple way… We did an episode on a bed that went together really easily, and it was a really simple and elegant way to show the ease of use.

And Apple, again, does the exact same thing here, where they’re showing the ease of use. And that’s not the ease of use of the phone. But if you have all your data, if you have all your photos, if you have your music, remember, these are very personal devices. So it’s like, I don’t want to go over to something else because if I don’t have my stuff, they’re like, no, no, no, it’s okay. Come on over, and we’ll make it really easy for you. We’ve already thought of that for you, right?

Stephen Semple:
Yes. And they’ve made it very clever. They’ve made it very entertaining, and they’ve done one at a time. Here’s the other part that they’ve done very well. There’s a URL they give you. If you go to that URL, what you hit is a page that discovers how easy it is to switch, and then the page is, you can get up to 145 bucks for your Android smartphone. Here are some great plans from some of the providers. Here’s how you transfer your photos and contacts. Here’s how you… it is all about change. So they’ve actually done a really good job of that.

Matthew Burns:
Well, and here’s the thing. So they’re advertising specifically a change to iPhone, right? Yes. So if we think about the consumer mindset, right? The consumers are like, oh yeah, you know what, if I go to that URL and all of a sudden you were trying to sell me something… Or it went to the main page where I had to go find how to go to it. No, they gave you a URL that met the client where they were at mentally.

Stephen Semple:
Bingo. Yes. The very first thing it says is discover how easy it is to switch. Anybody typing in that URL has seen the ad and is thinking about switching, hit ’em right away with that language. And the first couple of things you can get, we will give you money for your Android, and here are some great plans for the iPhone, right? They were like, right away.

Matthew Burns:
Simple. Well, and think about that as if what you’re selling here is easy to switch, and you land anywhere other than all the ways it’s easy to switch anywhere else, now you’re not easy to switch. They’re brilliant when they say this. They follow through the entire way.

Stephen Semple:
And they even have, when you scroll down a little bit, an iOS app to transfer your photos and contacts in a simple few steps. They have a screenshot, select items to transfer, click, click, click, and then “Transfer Complete” is the other screenshot, right? Yeah. So what they’ve done is great. I’m speaking to somebody, I’m speaking to users, come over. Here are some reasons why you want to come over.

Great. And then if you go to the URL, we’re actually going to show you how easy it is, and we’re going to even have a link to where you can talk to somebody about transferring, and you can talk to somebody about plans. There’s even a link for that.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah, no, and it’s brilliant. And here’s the thing, and I know that we’ve had some, while we’re talking, we’ve been showing some of the other ones, but even think about this way, being able to transfer my contacts, maybe that’s not important to me, right? Speed probably would be important to a lot of people, but it isn’t necessarily a selling feature for everybody. Better security, privacy, all of these things that they’ve highlighted over the course of this campaign, they understood that one message isn’t going to work.

And they also understood that 15 messages in one ad wasn’t going to work. Correct? It’s a brilliant, brilliant use of marketing where they said, we know that there are these 15, 10, whatever the number is, things, but we’re going to talk about one at a time. So it’s simple. And then as soon as you say, Oh, wait a second. So both my contacts and privacy, those are the two things that are most important to me. Now I can see it. And now I can justify looking at the URL.

Stephen Semple:
And the other thing that they did was, yes, it’s 10 or 15 different things, but they communicated in a manner that pulled them all together. So that left-hand side, right-hand side, left-hand side, right-hand side, left-hand side, right-hand side. So basically, it was also an integrated campaign; even though it was 15 different things, it was a very integrated campaign.

Matthew Burns:
Listen, they’ve done this before. We’ve already highlighted it. They did it with the PC versus Mac, right? These are the two options, and this is what happens, and this is how we fixed it. This happens. This is how we fixed it.

Stephen Semple:
Yes.

Matthew Burns:
They just did it with nothing audible. There’s no, there’s no actual script writing here. It was just, hey, we like this idea and this is how we transfer it. It was very simple, but it was very consistent.

Stephen Semple:
So here’s the interesting thing, and I’ve been thinking about this lately. We talk about how we PVR over ads. So ads aren’t as powerful on television as you PVR over them. You skip over them with the PVR. But part of what’s always bothered me with that, in some ways, I have more attention watching the television as I’m skipping over it.

So what’s really interesting about these ads is that, as you’re skipping over them, you would still see them. Oh, brilliant. Right? Because you actually, when you’re doing that, fast forward, you’re watching the TV, you’re focused on the TV, you don’t hear anything, but those ads would still work.

Matthew Burns:
Oh my goodness. You’re absolutely right. Listen. Brilliant observation there. Holy moly. Yeah. So I mean, guys, just think about that. I mean, the PVR is one thing. The other thing is non-skippable ads on Amazon and those kinds of things. Again, it’s one of those ones where we don’t necessarily like the repetition factor, but for massive brands. So the national brands where this play would work really well for them, they made them short enough, not 30 second spots. They made them so short that it’s easy for them to be watched, right? There’s a different use case.

Again, it’s one of these things when we talked about context, and a few episodes ago, that’s knowing the context of where these things can be played. They’ve thought through a lot of these really awesome and hard for most advertisers to get around things. So now that’s completely brilliant. I do want to highlight one more because I talked about it, and I want to show here the privacy one. We’ve done the privacy video, but this is just a humorous way to do the privacy one. So watch this. Steve, let me ask you a question, have you ever looked over somebody’s shoulder to look at what…. [laughter]

Stephen Semple:
But here’s the interesting thing, you haven’t…

Matthew Burns:
No.

Stephen Semple:
But it’s, it’s a fear. But it’s the emotional feeling.

Matthew Burns:
It’s a fear. It is a fear of anybody, right? I love it.

Stephen Semple:
So what they’ve done is they’ve created a very easy, in other words, of just saying, hey, you want to have privacy. You want to have privacy. That’s the feeling.

Matthew Burns:
Interesting. And did you notice, and this is my favorite thing, I leave everybody with this, but did you also notice that the guy who was doing the creeping, he almost looked like the guy from the Mac vs PC ads?

Stephen Semple:
Oh, a little bit of a throwback, I didn’t even notice that.

Matthew Burns:
I’m not saying it was the same guy, but to me it looked like him. So a little shade to the competitor. Anyway, guys, I know I said I hate them. I don’t hate them. I love Apple. But they’re constantly showing us what we should be doing in marketing. Take those examples, use them for your benefit.

Steve, thanks, man. I appreciate you allowing me to bring something to you because it kind of brings a lot of these out for me. But we will talk in about a week, and I really appreciate all the work that we do together. Alright, it’s been fun. Awesome man. Okay, talk soon.

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