A 7-step case study to help you understand the entire planning process of Apple’s classic advertisement

If you are an ordinary person and you hate advertisements, you can think back to before you entered the advertising circle. When you were watching the most exciting movies , TV series, novels, jokes, and beautiful pictures on WeChat Moments , you would always see annoying advertisements. These advertisements were carefully planned by advertisers who worked day and night in the office buildings of China World Trade Center, Jinbao Street, Lujiazui, and Poly World Trade Center, just to get your attention for 3 seconds or a forwarding on WeChat Moments. I would be very grateful if you could open a public account to complain about them.

But as an advertiser, when you walk in front of an advertising billboard on the street, see H5 (short for HTML5 technology) on WeChat , or just download 1,000 classic ads, do you really understand the tricks behind these ads?

Today we are going to talk about how to use the “Seven-step Case Analysis Method” to scientifically look at an advertisement, which can greatly enhance your creativity and strategic abilities.

Let’s take the example of the “Three Minutes” advertisement that Apple and Chen Kexin collaborated on during the 2018 Spring Festival.

Click the button to watch the ad

first step

Look at subjective feelings

After watching it, don’t think about how he shot it. Use a notebook or spend 3 seconds in your mind to think about how you felt after watching it.

00:03

00:02

00:01

You may feel:

Very touching

reality

Apple is so loving

I cried

Trying to trick me into buying an iPhone again

Apple's video recording function is really good

In fact, advertisers need to learn to be schizophrenic. Although they are like TV editors and directors and can no longer watch advertisements like ordinary consumers, they must learn to let go of past experiences and watch each advertisement for the first time with an empty mind. You will gain the initial touch of emotion. Today, I watched for three minutes and found that the child was reciting multiplication formulas before the train arrived at the station, and he cried a little.

Step 2

View and ask questions about topics

Look at the theme and product. Apple’s three-minute theme is “Use iPhone X to shoot your family’s Spring Festival story” . The story was shot with iPhone X. When you watch it for the second time, you can make hypotheses based on the theme, and then verify your hypothesis by looking up information.

Is this to express how awesome the iPhone X's camera is?

Why work with Chen Kexin instead of Zhang Yimou?

Why did you choose the Spring Festival travel rush as the background?

Why is the story about flight attendants and children?

…

Step 3

See creative expression

At this time, you can search for the keyword "Chen Kexin Three Minutes" through Baidu, Weibo, WeChat public accounts, advertising industry digital English network, etc. to get more behind-the-scenes postures, or team revelations and interviews. For the three-minute advertisement, I will paste my answer about "Three Minutes" on February 4, 2018, on Zhihu ID: Qian Qian Qian Long:

No one in China can handle movie themes about family and love better than Chen Kexin. If you watch it carefully for three minutes, you can see that there are many elements from the movies "Comrades: Almost a Love Story" and "Dear".

Apple used the most extreme and best way to pay tribute to the 2018 Spring Festival, using movie standards to shoot a 6-minute commercial, saying that domestic products can follow suit. Hahahaha, I've been in the advertising industry for so many years, and many brands have been embarrassed when they asked about the price. The budget for "Three Minutes" is no less than 1 million US dollars (later interpreted by the media as 7 million RMB), and the budget for offline and online hard advertising has to be increased.

Step 4

Look at the media platform strategy

After checking the information and knowing the background of this advertisement more specifically, we sorted out and observed which media channels it was placed on. Let's sort out the channels for Apple's "Three Minutes" short film to be released.

It turns out that Apple launched a Spring Festival brand promotion campaign

• In 2015, Apple invited director Ann Hui, art director William Chang, photographer Christopher Doyle and other filmmakers to create "Old Records," showcasing how Apple products can provide creativity and ideas for users' creations.

• In 2016, Apple teamed up with Jonathan Lee, along with his two disciples Li Jianqing and Bai An, to perform the New Year advertisement "Sending You a New Year Song", which focused on the music creation capabilities of the iPad.

• Apple China launches four new year ads in 2017

"Color, Fragrance and Smell" promotes the iPhone's emoji function

"Family Portrait" promotes the iPhone's graffiti feature

"Year after year of fishing" promotes iPad's painting function

Good Omens: iPhone-controlled drones

• In 2018, Apple collaborated with Chen Kexin and started with the theme of family reunion during the Spring Festival travel rush.

At this point, you can probably guess how Apple’s 2019 Spring Festival promotional campaign will go.

Step 5

See insights from this campaign

Apple's technology products allow Chinese people to better feel and enjoy the joy of family reunion during the Spring Festival from the perspective of art such as movies and music. The Apple brand is a product that best combines technology and humanity.

Step 6

Who are the brand’s main consumers?

Looking at the consumers that the campaign is targeting, we can take the cooperation with Chen Kexin in "Three Minutes" in 2018 as an example. It can be understood that Apple hopes that iPhone X will be marketed to first-tier and new first-tier consumers, new middle-aged and young consumers who like movies. Go home and use iPhone X to shoot your family's Spring Festival story. What if you don't have iPhone X? Shop, shop, shop! Apple's online and offline stores have big promotional surprises during the Spring Festival, such as free Beats headphones when you buy an iPhone X, and free installment payments.

Step 7

See if the brand market problem has been solved

To see whether this brand campaign can solve the problems faced by Apple, we need to go back to the mobile phone category in the Chinese market to look at this issue. China’s mobile phone sales in 2017: Huawei Honor ranked first, OV ranked second and third, Apple ranked fourth, and Xiaomi ranked fifth.

In 2017, when it comes to mobile phones, everyone is saying the same thing: my mobile phone camera takes the best photos.

• Xiaomi released its first full-screen mobile phone, and the entire Xiaomi product line focuses on "taking more beautiful photos of people".

• VIVO and OPPO use the latest first-line celebrities as their spokespeople and sponsor major variety shows to "light up your beauty".

• Huawei and Leica Imaging collaborate to focus on photography masters.

Apple, just looking at this, you can tell that everything you shoot is processed. My camera takes the most realistic and objective photos, and provides the best experience. It can also be used to make movies. You see, the great director Chen Kexin has used it. If you don’t believe me, watch "Three Minutes", which then caused a sensation for nearly half a month. It has gained popularity, but what about sales?

Let's take a look at Apple's first quarter financial report for 2018. The revenue for Greater China in the first quarter was US$17.956 billion, an increase of 11% from US$16.233 billion in the same period last year. Hehe, you see, with such a huge investment, Q1 of every year is the peak period for iPhone sales.

So, let’s summarize:

Through the above "Seven-step Case Analysis Method", when we watch an advertisement, as long as we can persist in analyzing ten advertisements, it will be more progress than downloading and watching 100 classic advertisements.

You asked about so many ads, which one should I start with?

To watch the most recent ones, choose an advertisement from your favorite brand and start breaking it down, then analyze it using the seven-step method. If you reverse the seven steps, you get the steps of advertising planning. This is how I plan various events and campaigns, and I hope it will be helpful to you.

If today’s “Seven-step Case Analysis Method” is useful to you, please forward it to your friends circle and group chat to see if your friends have any better ways to interpret advertisements?

If you have any better tips for watching ads, please leave a comment.

The author of this article @Creative Manual is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services, advertising platform, Longyou Games