Andrew O'Hara
Media Arts Lab, Apple's longtime advertising partner, this week axed about 50 employees as the company hews to the tech giant's evolving ad strategy, a report said on Tuesday.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reports the downsizing occurred on Monday and impacted various divisions of the agency. According to the report, "many" cuts were made within the strategy division of the organization, responsible for helping Apple dream up new ad material.
Media Arts Lab, a subsidiary of advertising firm TBWA\Chiat\Day, counts Apple as its only client and has had a close partnership with the iPhone-maker for decades.
"Yesterday was a difficult day, as we had to part with some of our talented colleagues. Our relationship with Apple has never been stronger," a Media Arts Lab spokeswoman said. "But as the needs of our client continue to evolve, we must adapt and continue to evolve the composition of our teams."
The agency created a number of memorable Apple campaigns over the past couple decades, including the iconic "1984" TV ad, the "Get a Mac" campaign, and more recently well-received holiday commercials and the award-winning "Welcome Home" ad for HomePod. In May, the director in charge of the HomePod spot departed to start a social media platform for musicians.
Apple began to move ad creation in-house in 2014, but the internal team's early efforts were initially panned. Rumors at the time claimed Apple was mulling a break with Media Arts Lab, but those claims were unfounded.
"Apple's confidence and trust in MAL as our singular ad agency is as strong as it's ever been," Tor Myrehn, Apple's VP of Marketing Communications, said in a statement to Bloomberg. "As we continue to evolve our marketing approach, we've asked MAL to do the same."
Most recently, the agency in May assigned new directors to handle ad output for iPhone and Apple's subscription services.
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9 Comments
50 pairs of feet hits the streets is not good... someone’s covering their butts...it can’t all be rainbows and unicorns....
Ever since I'm PC I'm Mac, Apple's ads have been unmemorable, cookie-cutter, and worst of all, humorless. Two basic templates: one has a loud, thumping track played over jump cuts of hyperkinetic choreography (be it of people or objects), the other has slow, soothing music providing a backdrop for a series of 5-second hyper sentimental mini-vignettes. One or two spots grab your attention. Iterations of the same basic mindless patterns get pretty boring. I used to stop and watch Apple ads, now, just like with any other ad, I change the channel or get a bite to eat. Is that really the audience now? Shallow and with very short attention spans?
Apple's ad strategy is the only thing that I can truly say got worse in the post-Jobs era. This is where Steve's 'taste' (as he used the word), his unique perspective standing in the crossroads of technology and the humanities/liberal arts (also paraphrasing him), is sorely missed.
Don’t need as many new ads if you don’t update your macs.
The last 6 years have been the worst ad's in in Apple's history - outside of the "Welcome Home" standout.
Whatever happened to the simple brilliance of Chiat/Day ads we used to see? Today’s ads are mostly just wallpaper for the mind.