It makes me cringe, and I think it's because it's trying too hard to be cool. The obviously chosen backgrounds and ethnicities of the subjects, the "was recently cool, but not really anymore" choice of a pop song. In Apple's ads, the music is either something you've not yet heard but will be popular soon (such as "New Soul"), or a legitimate classic from decades ago. They don't run ads of songs that are on their way out. Second, Apple's ads make it look like the dancers are just really enjoying the music, and dancing well to it. Here, dancers are being forced to be constantly touching a screen in a non-natural way, which makes it look neither fun to be dancing nor effortless to use (as a UI experience), and the result is bad dancing and awkward corporate-seeming stiffness, only enhancing the "we're trying to hard to be cool" vibe. Ugh.
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It makes me cringe, and I think it's because it's trying too hard to be cool. The obviously chosen backgrounds and ethnicities of the subjects, the "was recently cool, but not really anymore" choice of a pop song. In Apple's ads, the music is either something you've not yet heard but will be popular soon (such as "New Soul"), or a legitimate classic from decades ago. They don't run ads of songs that are on their way out. Second, Apple's ads make it look like the dancers are just really enjoying the music, and dancing well to it. Here, dancers are being forced to be constantly touching a screen in a non-natural way, which makes it look neither fun to be dancing nor effortless to use (as a UI experience), and the result is bad dancing and awkward corporate-seeming stiffness, only enhancing the "we're trying to hard to be cool" vibe. Ugh.
Ironically, the very first dancing-silhouette iPod commercial was set to a Black Eyed Peas song--before they made it big.