Apple a day.

When it comes to product placement, Apple are doing very well for themselves. Back in the old days they had to actually work to get their products into other people’s ads, films and TV shows, but these days they’ve pushed that little lever that lets you swing your ergonomic chair back and they’ve got their feet up on the desk. In fact, they’ve already gone home and are having a snooze by the fire in the Jason Recliner.

Because thanks largely (but not entirely) to the success of the iPod (which after all grew from a philosophy that informs all that Apple creates… except the one-button mouse, which is form giving function the finger, although thankfully Apple have seen the Might there. Oh, and the iPod’s symmetrically-shaped headphone cable sucks as well, but maybe that’s a good thing because it meant I switched back to using my old asymmetrical neck-chain Sony ones which, thanks to their being not-white, have probably saved me from being mugged every second day, and then copping a second thumping when the mugger discovers the fruit of their labour is merely a miserable third-generation iPod! How are they supposed to watch Pirates of the Caribbean on that?

But where was I? Oh yes, thanks largely to Apple being so hot right now, every man jack and his advertiser are desperate to get Apple products into their ads in the hope of picking up a little reflected glory.

Which is all well and good, but sometimes, as with this ad for New Zealand tourism, the quest for glory starts to look a little desperate and pathetic.


Note the iPod taking pride of place, but also note absolutely no reference to Apple or iPods anywhere else. Sure, they mention you can apparently organise trips to New Zealand ONLINE (Um, newsflash!), but the link from there to iPod is tenuous at best.

Less pathetic, but just as misleading, is this ad from Optus.


Optus, you’ll see, are quite happy to use Apple hardware to promote their product (once they’ve photoshopped off the Apple logo, of course), but if you’re a Mac user who signs up and calls their technical support, you’ll be told that Optus don’t support the Mac and to tell your story walkin’.

And no, it’s not an Apple Display plugged into a PC, because that’s an OS X scroll bar they’ve decided to paste in there for some unfathomable reason. And curiously, the scroll bar is showing there’s more to the page than we can see, which begs the question, “What will be revealed if you scroll back up?” Some sneaky small-print nastiness would be my guess. Possibly the bit where they let you know they don’t support Macs. :)

Just plain bizarre is this ad…


…for an Apple MacBoo… oh wait, I’m sorry, it’s not a MacBook Pro, it’s a… Twinhead or something laptop? I got confused because that’s Apple’s ‘Aqua Blue’ default desktop wallpaper you can see there on the laptop’s display. Trying to make your product look like something it isn’t is not a great way to project confidence. It’s like a Daewoo dealer sticking VW badges on his cars, hoping that no-one will notice. And I find it funny how they ask, “Why Settle For Less?” while making the brightest point of the ad a recognisable image from a competing operating system this machine can’t even run. (Unlike a MacBook which can do everything the Twinhead can do, and more.)

But where you could explain the Twinhead incongruence away as being some PC guy who liked the wallpaper and just downloaded it, I’d love to know the explanation for this double-take from The Sopranos:


Here’s an establishing shot of Janice Soprano tapping away evilly on her Apple PowerBook G3. But when we cut to her point of view, what do we see?


Windows?! What?! Even back in 2002 she could've easily used OS X and a multi-protocol IM client for her trickery, but she went instead for a Windows emulator? She really is insane!