Anyone Remember That Blurry iPhone Super Bowl Pic?
In February when Tim Cook tweeted the blurry Super Bowl celebration picture that he took from his own iPhone, it became a worldwide joke. A pretty funny one too. I couldn’t help but smile every time the “Shot on iPhone 6” meme popped up. It seemed like everyone was having a lot of fun with it. Except maybe Tim Cook.
Shortly after the picture went viral, the tweet was deleted and Tim never responded to it. A lot of commentators were disappointed that Tim didn’t own the picture and try to harness all that publicity in humorous sort of way. Well, he ultimately did. Only it took seven months to do it.
When the first shots from Sports Illustrated were released last month showing what a professional photographer could do with an iPhone 7 Plus, all I could do was laugh. I thought, finally, here was Apple’s response. I wonder how long the PR team at Apple stewed about that “Shot on iPhone 6” meme, planning their revenge?
Anyway, it was a thoroughly effective response. The press was wowed by how great all those game pictures looked, and it stoked my interest in the iPhone 7 Plus more than anything else I’d seen. But I’m not sure very many people made the connection from the SI spread back to the blurry Super Bowl pic. I don’t think I heard a single reference back to that pic from February.
It is kind of emblematic of how Apple sometimes operates. After the blurry picture came out, everyone wondered if or how Apple would respond. Tim and his PR team have been working in private for seven months on the perfect response. It was good, I’ll give them that. But it was so delayed that it lost some of its punch.
Still, revenge is nice when you’re the CEO of a company with untold resources at your fingertips. And Apple kept it classy. There were no self-deprecating slams making the iPhone look even worse or Tim look like a buffoon. And no digs were taken at those who poked fun at the picture. Just the clear message of “Okay, you want to talk about the iPhone’s NFL game picture chops? Bam! How about these pics? Let’s see THESE go viral shall we?”
When the first shots from Sports Illustrated were released last month showing what a professional photographer could do with an iPhone 7 Plus, all I could do was laugh. I thought, finally, here was Apple’s response. I wonder how long the PR team at Apple stewed about that “Shot on iPhone 6” meme, planning their revenge?
Anyway, it was a thoroughly effective response. The press was wowed by how great all those game pictures looked, and it stoked my interest in the iPhone 7 Plus more than anything else I’d seen. But I’m not sure very many people made the connection from the SI spread back to the blurry Super Bowl pic. I don’t think I heard a single reference back to that pic from February.
It is kind of emblematic of how Apple sometimes operates. After the blurry picture came out, everyone wondered if or how Apple would respond. Tim and his PR team have been working in private for seven months on the perfect response. It was good, I’ll give them that. But it was so delayed that it lost some of its punch.
Still, revenge is nice when you’re the CEO of a company with untold resources at your fingertips. And Apple kept it classy. There were no self-deprecating slams making the iPhone look even worse or Tim look like a buffoon. And no digs were taken at those who poked fun at the picture. Just the clear message of “Okay, you want to talk about the iPhone’s NFL game picture chops? Bam! How about these pics? Let’s see THESE go viral shall we?”
Hmmm, can you see much of a difference in the photos above?
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