According to the Business Insider, seemingly sick of Steve Jobs’ control issues, Adidas has canceled a $10 million iAd campaign after its submitted campaign was rejected three times. It’s not a first, however. In August, Chanel walked away after too much meddling by Apple with its creative.
Adidas isn’t commenting and neither is Apple other than to say it believes Adidas will still advertise on the platform.
But Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is commenting and she thinks Apple’s going to be in trouble with it’s strict stance on iAd acceptance. In an interview with Reuters, she said, “That’s going to fall apart for them. Advertisers are not going to have that type of control over them. Apple wants total control over those ads.”
As important as the iAd may be, it pales in comparison to the disdain a brand (and its agency) has for anyone interfering with the creative process. One could argue all Apple is trying to do is keep crappy ads off the iAd platform. Every publisher has the right to reject whatever they want for whatever reason the choose. But heavy-handed creative oversight just isn’t going to play. Not with the egos that exist in this industry.
But that may all be moot as the iPhone isn’t the only game in town when it comes to mobile platforms. According to Nielsen, while the iOS does have 28 percent market share as of August, RIM/Blackberry has 31 percent and Android has 19 percent, a dramatic increase over the 8 percent it had in January.
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However, of those who bought a smart phone in the last six months, Android is the most popular OS with 32 percent share followed by Apple and RIM/Blackberry with about 25 percent each.
The moral of the story? Not everyone uses Apple’s iOS. In fact, it’s not even a market share leader. And in the face of Android, it’s destined to decline in market share. So Steve Jobs might want to examine his control issue, hedge his bets and stop trying to play creative director over every campaign.
