Sustainability Marketing
The Green Apple
This week the highlight in the TMT landscape was Apple’s iconic iPhone launch event and what stole the show was their “The Mother Nature” ad video. Apple for a long time has focused on “Quality” over “Innovation” and strives to achieve the balance between the two. Apple has proved to be a wonderful storyteller time and again. While “The Mother Nature” ad went viral for multiple reasons probably because they showed it in the middle of their keynote, this is not their first sustainability video. They have been on this journey and talking about the environment since 2015. In this week’s blog, I will put the spotlight on some of their old sustainability videos and deconstruct their messaging strategy.
Storytelling Style
They have been using the art of persuasion, that Robert Cialdini is talking about in his books and it’s called pre-suasion. Pre–suasion is the practice of getting people sympathetic to your message before they experience it. It’s about all the things that happen before you ask someone to say yes to your proposal. Apple has been consistently doing this in all their messaging. Even in the product launches, they spend the majority of the section talking about the features and minor details even before they show their flashy product on screen. The screen time on the actual product is maybe only 20% however the actual elements of Pre-suasion consume 80% of the time.
Let’s use this framework to understand how a product company is convincing millions of buyers to buy the best iPhones every year and still building an image of a responsible, sustainable, and environment-friendly brand. Here is a trip down memory lane!
2016: Liam — An Innovation Story 🤖
Liam is a robot that Apple unveiled in their 2016 iPhone launch to reuse and recycle every single part of the iPhone 6. The ad follows the Pre-situation framework. Liam the protagonist in this ad isn’t revealed until 15 seconds in the ad. The ad starts with describing a problem, where Liam is the solution. And then it goes deeper into describing how Liam works and finally how that makes the world better.
WORD COUNT ANALYSIS
These words are more relevant to the content of the ad, as they describe the main features of Liam, the iPhone, and the recycling process. The word story also implies that the ad is trying to create a narrative around Liam and the iPhone, rather than just presenting facts. The words gold, copper, camera, silver, and others are examples of valuable materials that can be recovered and reused from the iPhone, which is one of the main messages of the ad.
2020: iMessage — Renewable Energy 💬
Now this ad has no transcript, the entire storytelling relies on sound and music to hook the viewers to read texts on screen. The background music transfers the happy mood indicating that the tone of the conversation with the typical iPhone sounds of sending and receiving iMessages. Similar to the previous ad, this too keeps the suspense on until the initial 15-second mark. It then makes you feel good about messaging as the computational power behind it is supported by renewable energy. I have seen hundreds of messages highlighting they have green data centers and data centers that use renewable energy sources. Never once did I come across a simplistic way of telling the story. Apple as usual makes everything about “You” (highest word count — used >4 times in this 45 sec ad).
2021: A climate change promise from Apple
I love this ad even more than “Mother Nature”. This ad is simple yet emotional. By this time Apple is Carbon Neutral, but now Apple wants to embark on its ambitious goal to make their carbon footprint non-existent. So they make a “Promise”, a promise to the future us to leave a carbon-neutral planet by Baby’s 10th birthday.
Again I have seen and read many corporate goals of becoming carbon neutral by 2030. Never once did I feel emotional reading or seeing it nor was that the intent. But the way Apple announced its commitment, makes you feel the promise for which they want to be held accountable.
2022: Every product carbon neutral by 2030
This ad is building a Plan on the Promise made a year ago. The storytelling continues year after year. Again, they make “You” a part of the Plan including how we charge our Apple devices. This ad is not so much emotional as much as it is practical. The video conveys the message and the feeling of execution and getting the ground started on the journey to Everything Apple Carbon Neutral. Did you notice how visuals from Liam — the robot comes back into this ad? It is intentionally done to remind viewers how Apple is already recycling used Apple products.
2023: 2030 Status | Mother Nature
Now comes the time to confront Mother Earth and give a status report on the promises and the plan. The video has sound, music, cinematic effects, comic relief, and a sarcastic flare to indicate Apple is not like other corporations when it comes to Sustainability. I don’t want to go deep into this, many credible sources have dissected this ad. Incredibly innovative way to deliver the status report, but they also have a story to tell as to how they got here.
There is a reason why Apple is still at the top. It’s products are no longer the most innovative nor economical. But it consistently has the focus on storytelling and positioning “You” as the Product user above the product. They are ensuring, “You” get the best quality product that solves your problems perfectly — nothing more, nothing less.
