BusinessInsider:
Apple announced a sweep of management changes on Thursday, which includes the appointment of Tor Myhren, who has become the company’s vice president of marketing and communications.
43-year-old Myhren will join in early 2016 from well-respected ad network Grey Group, where he was worldwide chief creative officer and president of its New York shop Grey New York.
Now he’s moving client-side. At Apple he’ll be responsible for all the brand’s marketing efforts — everything from its big TV campaigns, to packaging, and retail store displays.
It’s been rumored for a while that Phil Schiller hasn’t been happy with Apple’s ad campaigns in the past 18 months. This is a sign the company is looking to shake up how it projects itself to the consumer.
“At Apple he’ll be responsible for all the brand’s marketing efforts — everything from its big TV campaigns, to packaging, and retail store displays.”
Will be interesting to see how he and Ahrendts collaborate on the retail side.
Love those E-Trade ads! Very clever and funny!
Ok I’m confused. According to Jony Ive’s bio on Apple’s website he’s responsible for packaging. So is this guy just responsible for how it’s displayed in stores?
Any idea why this guy is reporting to Cook and not Schiller?
They should just make the products better. The reason I buy fewer Apple products today than ever before and spend much less money with Apple than ever before is not the advertising. It’s because the products suck. Especially the software, which is the entire point of a computer. The hardware is just a frame that you hopefully can almost completely ignore.
As a small example, I had to give up using the Music and Podcasts apps because the lock screen transport controls are so jammed together that my average-size fingers are too big for them. I can’t raise the volume without hitting pause. And I realized that was not my only problem with those apps. They are NO FUN AT ALL. They are like running Excel, not using a jukebox. And the fact that you can be looking at a 2048×1536 pixel view and yet for some reason the transport controls (play, pause, etc.) are not showing is unforgivable. The Mac version of iTunes has had the transport controls showing the whole time even though you could just hit the spacebar at any time to play/pause, and yet the iPad version of Music will hide the play/pause from you regularly.
And Music is like the 19th Apple app I gave up in the last 2–3 years.
The truly sad thing is, I can remember having friends over in like 2011 and I would put my original iPad on the coffee table with the Music app showing (I don’t let my iOS devices auto-sleep, so the Music app was constantly showing) and guests would slide it over and choose the next song or playlist or album and I never had to even explain to anyone what an iPad was, what iOS was, or how to use the Music app, even if they had no experience with any of that. And everybody ENJOYED using it. The iPad was happy to just transform into a jukebox for the evening and I got tremendous value out of that.
These days, I have to train my relatives to use their iPads and iPhones, even when they have been using iOS since 2008 or 2009. And it is no fun at all. It is like giving someone Excel lessons.
So the person who needs to be fired is not the marketing person.
I do agree that the iPad versions of the Music app have sucked since iOS 7. It is arguably the least polished app in iOS since the redesign. But I think you’re blowing it out of proportion just a tad. The Music app on iPhone is arguably a step forward, playback controls are always on screen in the mini player, once a song has been selected. I do also believe there are other layout improvements, over the previous design.
I think we are romanticizing the “old style” a little too much. I’ve always had complaints with Apple’s built in apps, and I had many more complaints with Music prior to Apple Music.
I’m not defending the Apple Music SERVICE, of course there are problems there too. But I don’t have nearly the same kind of complaints that I see from others. The only complaint I had was not being able to go to an album once I select an individual song. Which has now been fixed in iOS 9.2. Like, if I select a playlist, and a song plays, and I want to see the rest of songs from that album, previously that functionality didn’t work (despite the interface having the option to go there).
Anyway, there’s always been problems with Apple software. I just think they are under the magnifying glass more than ever, and people romanticize their nostalgia for past software from Apple. iOS 2 was THE MOST frustrating experience I’ve ever had from Apple. And that was during Apple’s supposed “glory years.”