Apple’s advertising campaigns have always been effortlessly produced and executed. They are successful on every level of their campaign process – from content creation to social media execution. One of their most successful – albeit under the radar – campaigns is Apple’s ‘Behind the Mac’ Campaign. ‘Behind the Mac’ is an ongoing campaign in which users of Apple products – musicians, teachers, celebrities, powerful women – are pictured working on their MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and iMac computers.
Target audience is one of the most important concepts for advertisers to know and understand. For a campaign to work, you must target the right audience, and Apple has never had a problem in doing so. With the ‘Behind the Mac’ campaign, they targeted numerous groups of people all within the same age range: 18-35. Men, women, musicians, students, teachers – the list goes on, but the age range is what they focused on for the campaign due to the maturity level of their products and prices. People aged 18-35 are more likely to buy Mac products and can usually afford to do so.
The simple objective of the campaign is portrayed in each black and white photo within each part of the campaign – Mac products are used by everyone for anything. Powerful people, simple people, creative people, logistic people. It empowers the audience to do what they are passionate about. It shows the audience that what they are passionate about and love doing can be done using a Mac computer. The objective Apple intended for this campaign is achieved through the simple and powerful video promotions, social media posts and social media ads they created and promoted.
Creative and media strategies employed for the campaign were showing the product and celebrity endorsement through photos and videos. The campaign is completely portrayed in black and white, an ode to the company’s adoration of simplicity in a world of complexity. All photos used in the campaign are ‘found’ photographs, meaning none of them were shot specifically for the campaign. Utilizing both essential characteristics of the campaign helps Apple accomplish two of their main objectives: simplicity and testimonial without words. The black and white nature of the ‘found’ photos allows the audience to picture the limitless options of color and creative ideas that started with a Mac. The photos also allow the audience to pay close attention to who is using the Mac products (i.e., Lady Gaga, Marie Kondo and other powerful women are part of one promotional video in the campaign). The effect of a photo is more powerful than any amount of words a celebrity could speak – especially because all the photos in the campaign weren’t staged for the campaign itself. The people portrayed in the photos are using the products on their own – no payment or contract to get them to do so.
The campaign was integrated on numerous platforms, including but not limited to: Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, TV and YouTube. The Snapchat ads for International Women’s Day are what caught my attention. The 49-second video that is now on their YouTube channel was split into 10-second portions on Snapchat in a ‘story’ form for viewers to click on. It felt like a video instead of an ad, which Apple made a point in doing so that viewers would watch it all the way through, like I did. Their tweet for the International Women’s Day video was retweeted 6.7 thousand times and liked by 31,000 Twitter users. It’s not the biggest number of shares, but it definitely stood out on a platform that produces a huge amount of content in just one hour. The YouTube video for the International Women’s Day video has been viewed over 27 million times. Despite its massive reach on Twitter and YouTube, the campaign could be integrated and promoted on more social media sites and platforms. In doing this, the campaign would be even more successful.
The shelf life of the campaign could be upwards of five years. The campaign is timeless and continues to pursue a goal that everyone wants to achieve: doing what they love. The portrayal of numerous types of people doing exactly that captivates and encourages the audience through pictures and strong, empowering music. The idea behind the campaign is simple and effective. The execution of the campaign is effortless, as usual. It is what works best for Apple, and that is something they are well aware of.
I’ve included some screenshots of their social media posts and some of their YouTube videos for reference below:
MC 3031 - Rylee C Lanoux 