For decades Apple has been considered as one of the brands (if not THE brand) to look for when it comes do branding and design. Their clean, spotless design is insanely consistent, which makes it easy to be (over)used in examples and workshop. If you work in marketing, I’m sure at some point in your professional life you’ve been through the obnoxious ‘If Apple made a car, what would it be like?’ exercise. Well, we all know how that ended.

But this hasn’t always been the case when it comes to ads. Advertising is a different beast, and Apple hasn’t always been the best in class in this one.

I used two simple criteria to select these ads:

1. Less than one minute: Apple is great at making films, building immersive worlds, and creating fantastic storylines. I wanted something where branding can make less of a difference (of course, 60 seconds is an eternity to talk about a product, but sometimes that time is necessary to the storyline). For this, I had to sacrifice some fantastic work on hearing aids

2. The ad must be functional: once upon a time, these ads would be called ‘bottom of the funnel’. I don’t believe in the funnel, but I selected ads that are specific about a functionality of an Apple device. Hence I left out two very famous TV spots, the legendary ‘1984’ presented at the Superbowl and ‘Hello’, to announce the arrival of the Iphone.

I browsed both official and non-official channels to find and watch as many Apple ads as possible.

Some great stuff is not even on their official YouTube account, which made the research a bit tricky BUT I came out the winner (hopefully) and here’s the final list for you to enjoy.

5. HANDS-FREE SIRI ON IPHONE 6

Bill Hader is the perfect casting for this simple product demo of 2015. The comedic setting is set in the first few seconds, and the video flows naturally. Shame they didn’t make a part 2.

4. APPLE MUSIC. DISTRANCTINGLY GOOD

Getting Drake to sing Taylor Swift makes this ad one of the best celebs cameo. Ever.

3. IPOD | SILHOUETTE

20 years ago, I used to walk around with a Walkman. Dorky, but everyone was kinda doing it, right? Then, I got a big CD player at home, and CDs became my format. So, I started using a portable CD player when walking around. MEGA dorky: huge pockets to carry around that monster, and if by any chance it felt, a huge noise and mess (and I looked even dorkier).

All this could have been avoided if only my parents had bought an iPod. Yes, I’m blaming it on them but yeah, I should have asked for it.

2. MAC vs. PC

A great idea is repeatable: a feature-by-feature comparison between MacBooks and PCs was a such a great idea that Apple was able to create 35 minutes worth of 30-seconds spot (so, around 70).

To be honest, watching them in 2025 they might not have fully passed the test of time. However, they remind me of when I first saw them years ago (and some are still a killer demo for a time when the MacBook was a bit of an alien tool), so call me nostalgic but that’s why they’re my #2.

1. APPLE BATTERY

The brief is simple: to show an everlasting battery.

Have you ever been to Latin America? You might meet, in the middle of long, straight roads a tractor crawling slowly, no hurry.

This ad sums up a functional benefit building an immediate tension: what is this fellow doing on a tractor? It creates an immediate sense of curiosity, and the reveal is just spot on.

And that was all folks for this week. Please let me know if this was useful, or any other comment.

See you next week!