Simone WilsonWhite background. Stark chrome letters. Floating Apple product, suspended from heaven.
Bleh. Bryan Evans, a recent Pepperdine graduate and summer intern at the Rubin Postaer and Associates ad agency in Santa Monica, is so over the Apple advertising formula.
“At one point, Apple had the most groundbreaking advertising in the world,” Evans tells LA Weekly today. “But lately…”
“… it's gotten really formulaic. There's a fine line between minimal and boring.”
So he set about showing us all how bored we would be if every ad looked like an Apple ad. And, perhaps a little ironically, we're eating it up like a Steve Jobs press conference.
Evans says that since he launched his “Applefied Ads” blog two nights ago, he's counted about 40 different sites that have picked it up — including Gizmodo and AdWeek. The page has racked up almost 200,000 views in 48 hours.
Not bad, for an intern.
So what if the world really was run by Apple? Here's a sneak peak, via Evans' wildly popular applefiedads.blogspot.com:
“I usually just Photoshop the hell out of it,” Evans says of his method. But he's also doing a photo shoot today, in response to the demand, “to take pictures of more hands in different angles.”
What does Apple have to say about of all this? No comment, so far. However, according to Evans, his creative director at RPA sent a link over to Media Arts Lab, who does print ads for Apple under parent agency TBWA — and they got a kick out of it.
Once the hype dies down, this Pepperdine alum is hoping his Applefied project might help get him hired in, you know, the real world. And we can put in a good word: He seems to be one of those Apple fanboys (and who's not, these days?) who realize how ridiculous, dangerous even, an unquestioning allegiance to a single company can become. The iProducts have transcended commercialism to become household icons, much like a BIC or a Post-It or a Coke.
Not that Evans is going to stop buying Apple crap — but the self-aware fan is at least one shade healthier than the guy who camps out for days to get his paws on a buggy new iPhone with an R.I.P. Jobs background.
“There's not too many times that people can take the piss out of Apple,” says Evans. But those lazy new iPad billboards? Due cause for parody.
[@simone_electra / swilson@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]
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