Apple to Enter the Ad Business

Apple recently reached the 1 billionth app sold on its App Store. The lucky guy who downloaded the billionth app won a $10,000 iTunes gift card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule and a MacBook Pro. That's a nice way of gaining fidelity from customers! More recently the iPad was released worldwide and in a few moths the new iPhone will hit the markets. In a few words this means that people are going to download more and more apps. That's why Steve & Co. must have thought that it was worth milking the cow in as many ways as possible: for example, by entering the ad business.

Nowadays developers already put advertisements into their applications, but that's done in a kinda goofy and frustrating way. Every time you mistakenly press with your finger on one of those stupid banners contained in the apps you are ripped out of the app and taken into the browser into a page that you could not care less about. The result, as mentioned by Jobs himself, is that people do not press on the banners.

Apple decided to develop a way in which it could be possible to see ads by remaining in the app. The ads are going to be interactive, emotionally engaging and very easy to develop. Steve jobs recently showed in a presentation how the new ad platform is going to work; strangely enough the ad used for the demo was the ad for the new upcoming Toy Story 3 produced by Disney Pixar (Jobs sits in the board of directors) which as humbly admitted by Steve is "awesome" and "really good".

Developers will get the 60% of the revenues from these ads; the rest will probably go into Apple's safe. Given the huge number of apps sold by the Cuppertino company this may be a good move. Moreover, this is going to help developers to make some money so that they will keep developing applications, maybe make some money out of it and - most of all - prices wil remain reasonably low for consumers.

If you are interested in learning more about Apple's (well, Steve's) vision of the future you can give a look at the videos of this year "All Things Digital" conference (covered by yesterday's Wall Street Journal). Here Steve talked about why he believes the iPad is the first step towards the end of traditional PCs and about Apple's idea to enter the ad business. Also present at the conference were other big fishes such as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, James Cameron, Steve Ballmer, etc... . If you want to see the videos you can click here. Enjoy!

A Brilliant Lesson on Creating Value

Advertising guru Rory Sutherland gives a brilliant and hilarious talk on creating value by changing our perception of the product, rather than the product itself. Please don't stop the video unless you have seen the Shreddies example towards the end of the lecture (from 12:00).

Culture Jamming

According to some recent study “The average American is exposed to about 3000 advertising messages a day, and globally corporations spend over $620 billion each year to make their products seem desirable and to get us to buy them". 3000 messages seemed way too many in my view, but probably it is because I don't live in the US. Anyway, I think that nobody would deny the fact that we are exposed to a huge number of commercial messages every day. The consequences of this mediatic bombardment are mainly two (out of thousands): firms have to become more and more capable of "breaking through the clutter". This basically means that they have to use new unconventional ways of communicating with the market (e.g.: product placement, events, ads where you would not expect them, etc...). The second consequence is more on the consumer side: our culture, therefore our "mental programming", the way in which we see the world is increasingly shaped by commercial communications. Entertainment, shopping and other consumer activities are frequently cited as people's preferred ways of spending their free time.

As mentioned in an article produced by the Center for Communication and Civil Engagement "As people in global societies increasingly enjoy the freedoms of private life, it becomes increasingly difficult to communicate about many broad public concerns. The personalized society enables people to choose individual lifestyles and identities that often lead to disconnection from politics. Many citizens become receptive only to consumer-oriented messages about tax cuts, retirement benefits, or other policies targeted at particular demographic social groups". We can therefore argue that, due to the information overload, we have become increasingly anesthetized or, better, like the Pink Floyd song we've become Comfortably Numb.

An interesting and creative answer to the forementioned tendencies of today's world is called culture jamming. According to Wikipedia, it can be defined as a tactic in which an activist attempts to disrupt or subvert mainstream cultural institutions or corporate advertising. Classic examples are the transifguration or transformation of famous corporate logos or national flags in order to produce a message. In this way people are forced to reconsider the branded environment in which they live and the underlying assumptions. The main goal of Culture Jamming is therefore to subvert and criticize the mainstream culture, what we take for granted and our consumeristic habits using the power of communication.

A nice and famous example is the one that jams with the US flag (in the picture): the stars representing the states in the blue part of the flag are replaced by various US corporate logos like McDonalds, Nike, MTV, etc... The message is clear without need for further comments. The examples are, anyway, pretty numerous. It is enough to google culture jamming and you'll find them by yourself. And, of course, I hope you like Jamming too!