I don't know any fellow art director nor creative director who would be willing to give up their creative control and hand it over to a supplier or media platform provider!
Only fools would commit such professional suicide.
🙄
Sure, advertising agencies do hire a lot of film directors, photographers, web programmers and other external specialists. But these hired guns all agree to work under the tight creative leadership of the agency. Even big name artists have to comply.
Our company worked with Apple's team for several weeks on an iAd but were never able to get something built that worked for us so we ended up dropping out. I wasn't directly involved so I don't know the exact details, I just know we ended up saying "thanks, but no thanks" after a few weeks of work.
So perhaps Apple will let us build our own iAds some day (we have apps on the store, I'm certain we have the talent to do it) but the current way just didn't work out for us. As it stands now, the Yahoo CEO is making smart comments.
I'm amused at all the "she's an idiot" comments coming from people who clearly have no experience with this process. Yeah, you don't like Yahoo mail. Great. That doesn't mean she's wrong.
Your story doesn't surprise me the least.
Apple simply doesn't have enough background nor experience in the advertising business for pulling off such a stunt!
If they had this kind of know-how Apple certainly would produce their own advertising in-house instead of delegate it to TBWA\Chiat\Day...
And that kind of presents a whole new problem, Apple is cutting out agencies, which is the world I come from. Frankly, you can\'t do that, because agencies are the ones who create and place the ads for brands. From a strategic standpoint, and I\'m a strategist, you handicap the whole vision when you include more and more people that you have to go to for advertising one brand/product/service. I\'ve seen, from firsthand experience, what happens when you have three or four different agencies trying to pull together one vision. It doesn\'t work. And Apple isn\'t acting as a disruptor here. They\'re acting as a fragmentor.
Exactly!
Creating great advertising that works takes a lot more than just a few cool idea and fancy programming.
Only someone who fully comprehends not only the product and company philosophy, but also its target audience will be able to create a strong and unique vision that seduces and nails the target.
This is almost an evolutionary process taking some time and effort.
I too have experienced desperate phone calls from clients who have hired and instructed suppliers behind our back to save a few bucks. Only to find out the hard way how destructive it can be when semi-creative hacks are messing with your vision or corporate identity they don't grasp.