Take It from Apple: Reward Your Audience with Great Creative

GREAT ADVERTISING is sometimes about rewarding your audience for their attention. Case in point: Here’s a commercial to love.

Way back when, I dreamt of a career in film and made Super-8 movies. For one, I built brackets to hang off the side of my car to capture a car chase from street level, and I pushed a camera guy around in a shopping cart on the TCU campus for a suspenseful dolly shot. We spliced the film’s dozens of cuts together with editing tape, and set it to a high-adrenaline track by Cheap Trick.

A few months later I took a “temporary” job as an advertising copywriter. It was so fun that I never looked back … but this sublime iPhone 12 spot may make me reconsider. Here is an ode to the joy of filmmaking that shows all the resourcefulness and creativity behind the camera, set to a sweeping score by Danny Elfman.

It IS magic. Thank you, Apple. Count me in.