Everyone’s talking about the new iPad ad, not the product itself

No such thing as bad press?

Apple’s new Crush! ad for its latest iPad received such a negative reaction that the company issued an apology just 2 days after its release, ditching plans to run it on TV, with Apple’s VP of marketing communications Tor Myhren conceding that the promo had “missed the mark”.

The one-minute video features various instruments of culture and creativity — a guitar, books, turntables, cameras, antiques — being pulverized by an industrial crushing machine, leaving only the new, admittedly very thin, iPad Pro in its wake. Some people wrote long indictments of the ad, outlining why it represented all that was bad about big tech, while others were more economical in their damnation: “Worst. Commercial. Ever.”

Rage bait

The tech giant now has an interesting opportunity to take the old “all publicity is good publicity” maxim out for a test drive. Preliminary Google Trends data suggests this might be the most buzzy bit of promotion that the iPad product line, quarterly sales of which peaked back in 2014, has had in years.

Indeed, it’s hard to imagine a world where Apple’s marketing execs didn’t see some kind of strong reaction to a striking visual of creative objects being destroyed. The fact that they’ve pulled the ad, however, weakens the deliberately provocative argument. It’s also just not very Apple — which has found success with upbeat, uplifting ads in days gone by.

For now, the ad still sits on CEO Tim Cook’s Twitter feed, having racked up nearly 60 million views and thousands of enraged replies.