Apple ad with urinals

A major TV advertising buy, just in time for March Madness.

From Matthew Panzarino’s “Apple ad focuses on iPhone’s most marketable feature — privacy,” posted last week on TechCrunch.

Turning the ethical high ground into a marketing strategy is not without its pitfalls, though, as Apple has discovered recently with a (now patched) high-profile FaceTime bug that allowed people to turn your phone into a listening device, Facebook’s manipulation of App Store permissions and the revelation that there was some long overdue house cleaning needed in its Enterprise Certificate program.

I did find it interesting that the iconography of the “Private Side” spot very, very closely associates the concepts of privacy and security. They are separate, but interrelated, obviously. This spot says these are one and the same. It’s hard to enforce privacy without security, of course, but in the mind of the public I think there is very little difference between the two…

I mention the issues Apple has had above not as a dig, though some might be inclined to view Apple integrating privacy with marketing as boldness bordering on hubris. I, personally, think there’s still a major difference between a company that has situational loss of privacy while having a systemic dedication to privacy and, well, most of the rest of the ecosystem which exists because they operate an “invasion of privacy as a service” business.

Cue the YouTube version:

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_6uV9A12ok&w=840&h=473]

My take: Hitting the 18 to 24 demo where it pees, gossips and puts on makeup.