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Apple has marked as private its day-old The Parent Presentation video on YouTube, meaning that it is no longer available to watch.

The-Parent-Presentation-Apple-Ad-Thumbnail.jpg

Apple has also moved The Parent Presentation to the bottom of its College Students page, effectively burying it. When we reported on the marketing campaign yesterday, the presentation was prominently featured at the top of the page.

It is unclear why Apple is suddenly hiding the ad, or if it will return. Apple did not immediately respond to our request for comment.

On social media, some people said that the ad was cringe or gross, so perhaps Apple pulled the video due to overly negative reception. To be clear, this is merely speculation, and there were others who found humor in the video.

Teenagers can be a tough crowd to impress.

It would not be the first time that Apple pulled ads from YouTube that did not go over well, or became the subject of a class action lawsuit.

Why-Mac.jpeg

The Parent Presentation is a customizable slideshow that explains why a Mac is a useful tool in college. The presentation is available to download for free in PowerPoint, Keynote, and Google Slides formats. Students can customize the presentation slides, and then show it to their parents to convince them to buy them a Mac.

In an accompanying YouTube video shared by Apple, comedian Martin Herlihy showed a group of high school students how to effectively use The Parent Presentation.

It is that video that is now hidden.

Article Link: Apple Pulls 'Convince Your Parents to Get You a Mac' Ad From YouTube
 
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I see the marketing missteps are continuing to occur.

This feels like an area of the company that needs to be examined and reformed.

I still can’t believe that horrendous “Forgot my husband’s birthday. Let me have my iphone make a photo slideshow birthday gift.” AD ever made it out to public eyes.
Yeah. Seems like senior apple execs are so rich that they’ve lost the common touch and sense of what’s a good campaign to run.
 
Here's why the ad doesn't work: It features a shady salesman. The implication is that you have to be shady to convince someone to buy a Mac (which makes no sense given that Apple arguably makes the best laptops, with the highest quality hardware and OS). The tone of the ad is off base relative to the real-world value proposition of a Mac.

The "presentation" is reminiscent of other shady sales pitches, like selling timeshares or any disreputable door-to-door business of the past (expensive vacuums, magazine subscriptions, etc).

I understand it's trying to be funny (and I also found the comedian to be funny), but the tone and connotation of the ad don't align with Apple's brand. Don Draper would not have greenlit this.
 
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I found that it gives the impression that they're helping people manipulate their parents to buy a Mac, using a presentation put together by Apple. It doesn't make me feel like Macs are actually good, but rather that Apple wants to trick your parents into buying you one, while admitting they're more expensive than the competition, and coming up with "yes but" excuses that they're actually worth the money. All while trying to make it sound like they're tongue-in-cheek making fun of this silly premise, as if they were admitting that they also thought this whole thing was too weird and had to add "haha just kidding" but then not actually kidding.
 
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