Apple’s new ad for the iPhone 5S is called “Dreams,” though it might have been called “In Your Dreams.
“Like other recent iPhone spots and iPad spots, for that matter, it shows people using the device in pretty amazing ways—to measure wind speed, to plot the course of an airplane, to place a diamond in the setting of a ring. At the 37-second mark, a woman places her iPhone against the rib cage of a horse they don’t even bother to explain it, really—all you need to know is the iPhone is horse compatible, and it hits you. You’ll never use your iPhone for any of this stuff well, OK, the audio translation app looks pretty rad.
Is an advertisement aspirational when you don’t necessarily aspire to many of the behaviors it depicts? It’s a key question for Apple, which is riding that line between rarefied and relatable in its marketing.
Dispatches From The Front 