Google initiates a friendly war against Apple

Google has joined the chat! Over the years, brands like Samsung & Microsoft have created ads, ritualistically making fun of Apple’s features. Google has taken it a step further to dig Apple with five ads centering their new Pixel phone launch campaign called #BestPhonesForever at the end of June this year.

Traditionally, Google directs its ad campaigns with a laser focus on the product & its features, they use a formal tone and have human presence in the ad, and the phone is shown in action. The ad is typically more than a minute long with a voiceover narrating the phone’s features. Here's the promotional video for Pixel 6 & 6 Pro.

In contrast, Google's latest campaign, created by Google's in-house creative agency Area 120, a newer approach was taken to appeal to the new generation audience. Each of the five ads emphasizes the features of the Google Pixel 7 Pro while implying that the iPhone 14 Pro falls short and puts Apple in a position to envy the advancements of the Google phone. These advertisements utilize a playful and light-hearted tone to convey the message that Apple's offerings are outdated and unable to keep up with the rapid pace of technological requirements in our modern world.

Each ad is about a minute and a few seconds long making it ideal for short-form content platforms like Instagram. The ads have two phones, the Google Pixel 7 Pro and the Apple iPhone 14 pro, conversing with each other in their distinguishable Alexa & Siri automated voices. Every ad focuses largely on one key feature of the Pixel phone whilst diminishing the iPhone’s qualities. For example, in their ad Lifesaver, which received 43M views on YouTube, shows the iPhone “faint” due to a drained battery consumed by watching a show, Google Pixel steps in and shares its battery to charge the iPhone, hinting that iPhone’s battery power is limited.

In the Plateau ad which gained over 22M views on YouTube, iPhone laments about its age – “the big one-four” and how jealous it is of the Pixel, while briefly talking about Pixel’s key features and how iPhones lack them. Pixel is here seen trying to cheer up the iPhone in an almost sarcastic tone by sincerely talking about how the only legendary Apple feature is their “blue bubbles” in the iMessage app, this line left people shocked, and people commented saying:

The outcome of these five launch ad campaigns received a range of reviews, with some individuals perceiving Google's messaging as somewhat offensive to certain Apple users, while others appreciated the creative and unique approach. The distinctive and light-hearted tone employed by Pixel while criticizing Apple has generated significant virality and captured people's attention.

In the #BestPhonesForever series, the same iconic duo reacted to people’s comments on their ads, in the comments section, audiences are seen wanting more from this series. From a brand awareness point of view, Google has seen more engagement on their page. Made by Google’s Instagram account usually receives 100-300k views, with the launch of this campaign in collaboration with another Instagram account called Google Pixel US, the pages saw a whopping 7.9M views on the Opening Up ad. Even iPhone users are talking about converting to Google’s flagship Pixel 14.

We at Incivus, tested all 5 ads on our creative effectiveness platform to understand how creatively effective and memorable the ads are. The majority of the ads scored a high creative effectiveness score which is above 75, indicating that the ad will be better suited to meet the objective of the campaign. The Lifesaver advert received the highest creative effectiveness score of 78.87 and a high recall score of 78.86, indicating that the ad would be a memorable one, which is evident from the results.

And the story continues! Just a few days ago Apple released two new video ads to suggest that the iPhone 14 Plus has a long battery life.

Could this be a retort? What do you think?