Apple’s advertising has been hit or miss in recent years. They have run the gamut from controversies like the hydraulic press crushing beloved artistic tools to misses like the early Apple Intelligence ads to delightful surprises like recent heartwarming holiday ones. There has been a lot of discussion about Apple’s newest billboards highlighting Genmoji all over social media lately. It’s generally understandable, to any longtime Apple enthusiast they do at first glance appear to be sort of lazy and uninspiring. That is until you remember that they are not for us, they are for average users who absolutely love emoji and are likely using much older iPhones that don’t support Apple Intelligence. Some of these ads are also contextual, I personally like the pizza rat Genmoji billboards here in New York. If it were a generic Genmoji, I would be less than impressed. So I do think they deserve some credit here. Whether you like them or not, these ads get their point across. They’re lackluster overall, but I am almost certain that they are effective.

I wanted to write a whole piece about the Genmoji ads, but then Apple decided to publish a whole slate of new iPhone 16e commercials that I think are way more interesting to talk about. The first ad really perplexed me, but I understand what they were going for now. It features a car dealership inflatable character flopping all around a white room holding an iPhone 16e. It is a weird one, especially for Apple. But when connected to the tagline “a price you can’t ignore” it actually makes for a fun commercial that I imagine will get peoples' attention. That being said, I do disagree with the statement. As I have said before this isn’t a cheap iPhone by any means. Maybe if prices continue to go up generally though, people will come to see it that way. At the end of the day, this is a very unique Apple commercial and probably one of the better ones that they’ve done recently. I suppose that is really as long as you understand it.

So we have talked about the Genmoji billboards and the flagship iPhone 16e commercial. But what really got me excited was the series of shorts that Apple published this afternoon. They are absolutely delightful and hearken back to old-school Apple in the best ways. You might notice that they are awfully similar to the first few iPhone 5 ads and even some earlier ones. I got a tiny bit emotional at first because of the deeply rooted nostalgia. I am not sure if it was intentional, but it is undeniably there. The photos clean up short is particularly good. I highly recommend checking them all out: camera, battery life, longevity, Genmoji, and durability.