Apple, known for its iconic ads like the legendary "1984" and the "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" series, continues its tradition of bold advertising. Following the buzz created by the recent iPad Pro commercial, the company is launching a new global privacy campaign titled "Flock" to promote its Safari browser.
The new campaign features a two-minute short film reminiscent of Hitchcock's 1963 movie "The Birds." It depicts a dystopian scenario where bird-like surveillance cameras chase and attack people throughout the city in an attempt to track their browsing history. As the number of cameras increases, the surveillance becomes more intrusive and threatening until iPhone users start using the Safari browser, causing the cameras to explode.
The campaign is accompanied by billboards in cities around the world and digital advertisements on social media. This new campaign echoes Apple's recent efforts to thwart digital fingerprinting on its devices, a method used by many companies to identify and track users. Predictably, these efforts have posed challenges for advertisers who rely on our data to optimize and tailor their ads to specific audiences.
According to Apple, several of Safari's protections are not offered by other browsers like Google's Chrome, making Safari the ideal choice for privacy. Safari, which holds a market share of about 24%, has long been known for protecting users from advertiser tracking across the web by blocking cross-site tracking using Intelligent Tracking Prevention to identify and block domains that collect tracking data.