The tonal opposite of the company’s most famous advertisement, it shows a stack of creative tools and imaginative objects being crushed in a giant metal press.
Cher sings “All we ever need is you” as the device destroys some of the most beautiful objects a creative person could ever hope to have, or see: a trumpet, camera lenses, an upright piano, paints, a metronome, a clay maquette, a wooden anatomical reference model, vinyl albums, a frame photo, and most disturbingly (because they suggest destructive violence against children’s toys, and against the child in all of us) a ceramic Angry Birds figure and a stack of rubber emoji balls.
You’ve heard the phrase “They said the quiet part out loud”, right? Well, that’s what this ad is doing.
And it’s not just speaking in room tones. It’s practically crowing its happiness at the destruction of artists, their tools, and their process.
Look at how the wooden figurine bends beneath the weight of the press, and how the paint cans explode and spray their contents against the lens like blood in a graphic horror film. Look at the grotesque way the destruction of the musical instruments and camera lenses are fetishized, metal buckling, glass shattering. They even made sure to put one of the emoji toys right on the edge of the press so that when the pressure bears down on it, we see its eyes bulge and then pop out. This ad doesn’t just show destruction. It delights in it.
When the press has stopped crushing things, the music cuts out and is replaced by eerie silence. This is a technique that movies use to summon audience unease after a character has been violently killed.
Then the press raises to reveal a thin computer pad that (one supposes) replaces all of the items that we just saw being destroyed. All we ever need, or something like that.
You can tell yourself that the items on that metal press are “only stuff “and that their eradication doesn’t mean anything. But if you do, it means you’ve never had a violent person destroy something you loved as a way of telling you “You’re next,” which in turn means you are a person who lacks imaginative empathy and should’ve kept quiet.
