How embarrassed is Apple by the reaction to its “Genius” TV ads that ran a few weeks back? Not only did it stop airing them on TV, as of Wednesday, the company has pulled them from its official YouTube channel and Apple.com. It’s almost like the company wants to make us all forget this whole thing.
Two weeks ago, the ads stopped airing on TV after just a week-long run. Apple’s agency that produced the campaign said it wasn’t designed to run any longer than that. Still, the three spots that featured an Apple “genius” helping Mac users, remained on the company’s YouTube channel and its own website. The Apple YouTube channel is a repository for all of its ads. And it hasn’t so far made a habit of pulling down month-old or even more drastically out-of-date ads: As MacRumors points out, the channel has Apple spots going back to late 2010.
Why pull them today? The controversy over the campaign, which some thought portrayed Apple customers as hapless or clueless, was sort of dying down. However, perhaps the last straw was former Steve Jobs’ associate and ad partner Ken Segall’s post yesterday. He accused anyone of thinking it was wise for Apple to target an older or less tech-savvy demographic — whose members are already spending a lot of money with Apple — of lacking “common sense.” Without saying it directly, he was also insinuating Apple itself was lacking that same sense in running the ads in the first place.
