“Shot on iPhone” – A Contrarian Campaign

Companies have long explored ways to highlight technology in their products.  And there are many, many commercials which you don’t remember! They do little more than emphasising the looks and capabilities of their products.

Apple did what it does best in 2015, building brand awareness via effective and inventive marketing with the “Shot on iPhone” global campaign.

“Shot on iPhone” was first established for outdoor advertising and was based on the fact that people were submitting their images and hashtagging them in various ways. According to research, consumers in Generation Z found outdoor advertising “relaxing.”

As a result, Apple started creating billboards with very minimal text, along with a basic image and the tagline “Shot on iPhone.”

Apple has a penchant for billboards. Apple originally used billboards in the 1990s to promote their controversial “Think Different” theme, which featured John and Yoko and Rosa Parks. Billboards defy every norm of today’s quick, transient, and broken digital society. It’s static, it doesn’t move, it’s one-of-a-kind—all of the things that much marketing today isn’t.

This campaign is every marketer’s aspiration: broad effects with strong, long-lasting effects that build a global community of beginner and professional photographers alike, all while highlighting Apple’s great camera designs.

This initiative gained hold worldwide, encompassing 26 nations and a new network of regular customers who had unknowingly become brand ambassadors.

Apple not only used photographs generated by non-celebrity iPhone users, but it also featured material created by celebrities, such as Lady Gaga and Selena Gomez’s music videos. The campaign was a success, and Apple was able to spread it beyond billboards. But at first, Apple blew up the photos and put them on public billboards to show how customers used the iPhone’s cameras and, ideally, to inspire people to try new things and take their own unique photos.

In 2016, Apple launched one of the first “Shot on iPhone” contests, accepting contributions from iPhone users all around the globe who wished to display a piece of themselves and their culture.

This inspired numerous serious works, ranging from nature photographs to full-length narrative films.

Instead of thrusting adverts in front of their target audience, Apple entrusted the power of advertising to the people themselves. All they offered was the means to leave a lasting imprint on the world via art.

Anyone in the globe might promote their work and have it noticed by a worldwide audience by just using the hashtag #ShotOniPhone. This even sparked the creation of some of the world’s first films filmed solely on iPhones.

Modern advertising seems to live in a world where people expect humour and snappy phrases, but Apple broke these rules and demonstrated its human side, spurring creativity from individuals who watched the ads. The campaign received several honours and left a lasting effect on the media.