If you ever go back and watch a movie you’ve taped off TV in the 80s, you’ll be shocked at how little racial diversity there was in advertising back then. Just about every TV ad featured a happy, white, big-haired 80s couple, often with obligatory son, daughter, and golden retriever. I don’t mean to suggest that we don’t still have a problem with racial diversity in advertising – or elsewhere – but it is striking to see just how bad the situation was 20-30 years ago.
Apple is apparently harping back to that time in advertising with their new, headless iPad ads that only feature white people. They’ve eschewed the cool, sometimes race-ambiguous iPod silhouette ads of old, and are instead making ads that look like they are set in a Pottery Barn catalog.
I screen captured these images from ads and tutorials on the Apple website. Check out how white and upper class all these iPad users are!
Oh hello Long-sleeve T-shirt man. Is that an Old Navy tee? As if! Try Eddie Bauer. Compliments on the home – what is that, a granite counter top? Love the white-framed painting of abstract whiteness on your white walls there, too. I bet when the sky isn’t totally white you get beautiful views out of the floor-to-ceiling windows.
This has to be a joke. So T-shirt man just plops the ol’ iPad down on his thousand-dollar blue jeans, kicks up his suede (or whatever) shoes and starts to read the New York Times? With a latte, no doubt. But does he read the story about Obama critiquing Wall Street excesses? Oh no, he’s like, What’s this about kayaking in paradise now?
Look! There’s the latte! What is this fancy-jeans person reading, you ask? Oh, only True Compass: A Memoir by Edward Kennedy. This is starting to feel like an ad put together by the people at Stuff White People Like.
Here is my favorite transition. You think, why is this Ann Taylor dress/J Crew flats woman looking at a picture of this little foreign child? Does she want to adopt him or something? (And how does she keep her white table so white when she keeps putting her feet on it like that?)
Nope – she doesn’t care about that kid at all – she was just thinking about going to Paris, like all rich white people! Such as this gentleman, of the dress shirt and the immaculate wood floors.
This family budget was calculated before the family bought a bunch of iPads and had to add a little 1% pie sliver for “unnecessary shit.” As a side note, look how much this family spends on insurance! I know it’s hard to see, but ‘insurance’ is that massive blue portion. Hence their fascination with Edward Kennedy and health care reform, no doubt.
Oh no! Somebody forgot to put arugula on the grocery list. Although maybe fresh spinach and flat-leaf parsley (is that what it says?) are adequate substitutes. And who buys things like toothpaste and fabric softener at the grocery store? Rich people. In fact, who buys fabric softener? Someone who doesn’t have to lug all their detergents and such two blocks to the laundromat, that’s who.
I guess it’s no surprise that an expensive product that has no real purpose except as a lap accessory would be marketed to wealthy white people. But do they have to be so obnoxious about it?
-AS
The reason there are only white people is because the ad is targeted for the elderly white. I think I’ve said before that I think the iPad is for old people, and this confirms it.