Forgotten Ads: Apple’s First-Ever iPod Commercial

Dibs to you if you remember iPod adverts before the dancing silhouettes…

If I asked you to recall how Apple used to advertise the iPod, you would tell me about black silhouettes dancing exuberantly against coloured backgrounds with their earphones in and an iPod in their hand, all while an indie-rock song played over the top. These iPod adverts from the mid-2000s are iconic. They are even credited with the dramatic upturn in business that the iPod experienced during this time, with worldwide sales jumping from 400,000 sold in 2002 to 20 million in 2005. The ads were only around 30 seconds long and went something like this…

…but the advertising was effective. The silhouettes meant that people were shown in the ad without worrying about picking the right people who would fit the look of who Apple would choose to represent an iPod user. These silhouettes showed a range of faceless people enjoying the iPod to their heart’s content while also being careful enough to hold the product in an outstretched hand, facing the camera. Through their lack of identity, these silhouettes proved very relatable to the buying public and were also used on other marketing materials relating to the iPod and iTunes. However, it is fair to say that iPod adverts were not always this effective in being well-remembered or fondly remembered.

The First Time Around…

2001 was a big year for Apple. It saw the debut of iTunes on Mackintosh computers in February, followed eight months later by the release of the iPod, Apple’s attempt to break into the portable MP3 player market. At the time, the dominant MP3 players were made by South Korean companies IRiver, Mpio and Cowon, and even American companies like RCA. Philips and Samsung had also entered the market with the Rush and YEPP, but South Korea owned the largest market share.

Apple would enter their iPod into this world, boasting a 5GB hard drive, 10-hour battery life and a high quality, backlit LCD screen allowing users to read up to six lines of text simultaneously. Early print ads even posited that you could download an entire CD from your PC to your iPod in 10 seconds. Considering the compression rate required for songs to be playable on an iPod, the device’s 5GB hard drive equated to 1000 songs (or up to 1300 songs of lower audio quality). The storage element of the device became the iPod’s marketing slogan and Apple’s perceived USP for the player, as they promoted ‘the iPod-1000 songs in your pocket’. The price for 1000 songs in your pocket: $399 (£275), the equivalent of $677.78 (£549) in today’s money, still making it cheaper than the new iPhone model.

To promote their newest product in 2001, Apple would take out ads in magazines, newspapers and on billboards, extolling this device’s virtues that were unlike your average MP3 player.

However, the iPod also needed a killer TV commercial to announce itself to the world. The first Apple Macintosh was unveiled with an iconic Super Bowl ad in 1984 directed by Ridley Scott, where a short-haired female athlete wearing an Apple vest throws a sledgehammer into the screen of Big Brother to free the minds of the people in a society representing George Orwell’s 1984. The Apple iMac’s launch in 1998 featured a series of 30-second ads that utilised the unmistakeable voice of Jeff Goldblum to complain about the problems with regular PCs (all of which began with the letters P and C) before praising the new iMac, a machine ‘about as un-PC as you can get (not like that). However, since Apple was now selling a portable digital audio player instead of a new computer, the approach taken for the iPod’s maiden TV commercial would need to be different. Here’s what they came up with.

‘iClod’

The first iPod advert opens with a man sitting at his Apple iBook with his earphones in. After some typing, he puts on the 1996 electronic instrumental track ‘Take California’ by British band Propellerheads. Seemingly hearing the song for the first time off of iTunes, he starts nodding his head to the beat. Within a few seconds, he begins to slightly groove his upper body. A rattle effect causes the man to take off his glasses in awe of what he’s hearing (captured in close-up). Soon enough, he starts to furiously bang and shake his head with such velocity to the beat that you’re surprised his head doesn’t fall off his neck.

Hugely enjoying ‘Take California’, as shown by the aforementioned head wobble, the young man quickly downloads ‘Take California onto his plugged-in iPod while the song continues to play. It should be noted that the director pays close attention to the song’s download, holding for a couple of seconds so the viewer can see the quick download speed from iTunes onto the device and that ‘Take California’ is the 987th song this man has stored on his iPod out of a possible 1000, putting over the device’s main USP.

With ‘Take California’ now on his portable music player, the young man unplugs his iPod from his iBook, now no longer constrained in his dancing by his chair, desk and the concept of sitting down. At this point, the track kicks into another gear but is briefly paused as the dude closes his laptop. However, he quickly shuffles through his library and presses play on his iPod to continue his exceptional audio experience. Cue more high-angle headbanging as the man walks out of the shot…

…only to slide back into the frame across his hardwood floor. Now, the man truly dances how everybody does when you know you’re alone in your flat. A little bit of fancy footwork using the heels is matched with wild and loose arm movements as we now see the man is possessed by the spirit of Propellerheads.

After briefly stopping to grab his jacket, our protagonist continues headbanging with his coat on and iPod in hand before moonwalking out of his living room. Ending his moonwalk with a triple spin, the dude proceeds to either perform the coolest or lamest way of walking to your front door. Have you ever walked to your front door while performing a sideways ‘running man’? I know I haven’t. However, I don’t live alone, so I am unlikely to ever attempt such a thing.

Eventually, the young man ceases his dance to place his iPod in the breast pocket of his jacket (let’s hope he remembers to move it elsewhere before he goes into any public toilets), which the camera shows the man popping in with ease to illustrate how portable this device is, of course.

Finally, the song is brought to an abrupt end as the man closes his front door and heads out into the world. While the viewer is no longer privy to the track(s) he is listening to or his sick dance moves, you have to wonder whether our protagonist carries on dance-walking through the hallways of his apartment building and even when he gets out onto the street. Would people spot this guy under the spell of a 1990s electronic track dancing down the road? Would they turn their heads and think how cool this guy was, or would they look at him weirdly and wonder whether he actually has a day job? Or maybe they do not notice him at all, only concerned with their own life matters? I do not know what the average city street was like in October 2001. Perhaps the man only dances in such an exuberant way when he’s alone under the comfort of privacy and, after leaving his flat, just listens to music like everyone else does due to inherent social awkwardness and fear of judgement? Whichever of those things is the case, we don’t know as that would involve reading too much into this minute-long advert for an MP3 player from 2001.

Once the apartment door closes, a narrator quickly pipes up and announces ‘iPod-1000 songs in your pocket’, immediately hammering home the device’s main marketing slogan. The iPod logo appears on screen, with the iconic capitalisation of lowercase i followed by uppercase P. We then get the Apple logo with the company’s main slogan, ‘Think different,’ written underneath as the commercial finishes.

The reaction

As mentioned earlier, the iPod did not immediately take the world by storm, but would still prove somewhat popular. After Apple’s recent financial comeback with the strong sales of the Apple iMac computer and iBook laptop, the iPod would sell 400,000 units worldwide in its first full year of release. In the two months after its October 2001 release, those sales were already at 125,000. Pretty good results for Apple and enough to give the company a decent foothold in the MP3 and portable music player markets, including a 15% share in the US and a 10% share worldwide.

However, if people had one issue (among many) with the iPod, it was how the device was marketed. Not the 1000 songs in your pocket slogan or the clean and straightforward trademark Apple print ads. No. It was the TV advert. The problem with having an actor dance as expansively as possible to sell the effectiveness and audio fidelity of the iPod is that the person in the advert will not be received in the same way by everyone who watches the advert. When you have someone banging his head, moonwalking and performing the sideways ‘running man’ to the sound of Propellerheads ‘Take California’, you are potentially opening yourself up to ridicule. The first iPod advert would receive this ridicule.

For a company that prides itself on applying simplicity to advertising, some viewed this advert as Apple trying too hard to be hip. Having to sell a music player instead of a computer, the company was trying to figure out how to make the iPod the ‘must-have product’ in MP3 players. However, once people saw the first iPod advert, they weren’t coming away thinking about the product. They were thinking about the guy holding the iPod and dancing like no one was watching in an ad broadcast to the whole world. Within a few months, the internet messageboards had had their say, giving the unnamed protagonist in the advert an unfortunate nickname, ‘iClod’.

Interestingly, the hostile reception to the first iPod advert was also shared by many within Apple itself. In his 2012 book, Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success, former Apple advertising creative director Ken Segall (who was behind the iconic ‘Think Different’ campaign beginning in 1997) would write that Apple “stumbled out of the gate in its advertising for iPod”. He would call the first iPod advert “uncomfortable to watch” before explaining:

“One problem with this ad was that it tried to layer some kind of artificial amusement on top of the product [the guy dancing]. That necessarily isn’t an ad killer in itself, but in this case the amusement wasn’t very amusing. It was a young guy trying to act cool and doing so in a fairly pitiful way.” (Ken Segall, Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success, Penguin Books, 2012)

Steve Jobs was another who wasn’t too happy with how the first iPod advert came out. Segall wrote, “Steve had often avoided the use of [‘real’] people in his ads because an actor who seemed cool to one viewer might be a turnoff to another. It’s a challenge to find that one person with universal appeal (as the ‘IClod’ proved).” Ken Segall also shared that this first iPod ad was not tested before it was sent out, so the staff at Apple were not aware of its reception until they saw the feedback online. He surmises that if it had been tested, the ad may have been pulled before airing. However, he eventually put it down as a “clunker”, saying, “The ad might not have been great compared to Apple’s previous efforts-but life goes on, and Apple would simply try to do better next time.”

The first iPod advert is an interesting curiosity to look back on. An advert that is regarded as a misstep by those within Apple, a rare mistake from the company that is often seen at the forefront of advertising. Compared to the the advertising campaigns that came before and after it, both for the iPod and other Apple products, the first iPod advert stands out like a sore thumb. It’s not a horrible advert. I wouldn’t even call it a bad advert. Moving the dancing to one side, the one-minute commercial shows off the iPod, how it looks, operates, and interacts with other Apple products like the iBook and iTunes rather well. It even subtly gets across the 1000 songs in your pocket moniker before outright telling you the moniker. The use of Propellerheads’ ‘Take California’ is a shrewd choice, using an instrumental track from five years earlier rather than a hit from a huge artist to advertise the audio fidelity of your new music player. The song’s beat also works as an ever-present soundtrack to the ad, manipulated by the commercial’s editor to decent effect.

However, you can’t ignore the dancing elephant in the room: the dancing. Could this ad have been more effective if the guy had done everything the same without stopping to groove every 30 seconds and literally dancing out the door? Yes. If Apple had applied their usual methods of advertising through simplicity to the first iPod commercial, this advert might have been more effective. However, it’s not like Apple didn’t take chances with their next iPod advertising campaign. The silhouette ads still feature exuberant dancing equivalent to that shown in the first iPod ad; it was just done with more style through the use of the silhouettes and brightly coloured backgrounds.

On the silhouette ads, Ken Segall would write in 2012: “Instead of asking you to buy this device, Apple was asking you to buy the emotion. Since iPod was all about music and joy, each ad simply conveyed the idea that someone was loving their iPod-without any need to show who that person was. These were incredibly human commercials, yet they never showed a human face.” (Ken Segall, Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success, Penguin Books, 2012)

That may be the difference between those iconic silhouette ads that now define the iPod in Apple’s advertising history and this first attempt that failed to hit the spot. Those later ads explain how owning an iPod could make you feel, whereas the earlier effort only showed how it made one person feel. There simply isn’t that same connection. By removing the human face, you can weirdly relate more to the silhouettes prancing about than you can to the real man dancing alone in his apartment.

The first iPod advert is now an interesting novelty in the company’s history. This first attempt did not quite hit the mark for everyone like the later commercials would, leading to the iPod and Apple eventually taking over the world. It is also a mostly forgotten ad these days, but it is an interesting one to look back on nonetheless.

Here is the advert in full if you want to check it out on YouTube: