Apple’s marketing team always seems to do something a little special around the holidays, creating ads that aren’t just about their products, but also showcase the company’s innovative ability as storytellers. Their latest ad “Heartstrings” is another excellent example of this. While this year’s holiday ad is a bit shorter than some of their recent ones (with a less than 2 minute runtime), it’s packed full of emotion and practical examples of their products helping improve the lives of those using them.
The “Heartstrings” ad begins inside of a home on Christmas morning, with a mother, father, and teenage daughter sitting in the living room near their Christmas tree. As the daughter happily begins to open her first present, the camera shifts to the father and all the audio suddenly becomes muffled. You can tell the daughter is saying something, but you can’t hear what any of the words are.
With the wrapping paper being opened you can see her gift is a guitar, and that’s when time jumps back to reveal a Christmas morning from years ago, where the young daughter is unwrapping a similar, small yellow guitar. While the audio stays muffled and distorted, a small montage of memories of the daughter growing up flashes across the screen, showing her smiling and playing in different places.
The story moves forward again to the present as the daughter pulls out the guitar and begins to play. As a viewer we can see the daughter playing the guitar, but with the muffled noise you can’t really hear the melody. At thiis moment the mother shakes the father’s shoulder and tells him to listen. He takes some AirPods out of their case and puts them into his ears and the song the daughter is playing and singing becomes crystal clear. As the song continues, the father adjusts the volume of his AirPods on his phone while a message that says “The New Hearing Aid feature on AirPods Pro 2” is displayed on screen.
The ad really ramps up the emotion by showing the clearly emotional father with a small smile on his face as the scene shifts back to the montage of the daughter growing up. This time while the father relives these memories the audio is nice and clear, seeming to show all the sounds and possible moments the father might have missed out on with his hearing issues. Right after a memory of the daughter says “I love you”, the ad moves to the present. The daughter finishes her song and gives her father a smile, which he returns, with a tear in his eye and a sniffle. Their family photos with a christmas tree in the background end the ad, with the Apple logo proudly displayed in the center.
The “Heartstrings” ad had a lot to live up to after Apple’s 2023 ad “Fuzzy Feelings”; it was generally well received for the positive feelings that it evoked and for having a nice blend of storytelling, and Apple did a nice job building off of what worked well for their previous campaign while also introducing some new features to their AirPods in an exceptional way.
As a holiday ad, “Heartstrings” does a lot of things right; it conveys excellent emotion, keeps the story simple yet effective, and it shows that Apple’s products can help improve people’s lives and make your holidays better. All of these elements present seemed to be missing in the 2022 holiday ad “Share the Joy”, which was a rare misstep for the company that seemed to miss the heart and effectiveness Apple is known for. They appear to have learned from their mistakes however and their holiday ads have improved greatly since.
In “Heartstrings”, contrast of the muffled sounds through most of the ad compared with the clear sounds later on shows the difference that having good hearing can have, especially when comparing the memories of the daughter growing up. Parents only witness their kids growing up for a short time, and the ad drives home how important seeing and hearing those moments are – which of course ties in to how Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 with their hearing aid function can be a life-changing item. Not every pair of headphones on the market have this feature, so showing what sets Apple apart and what their products can do for their consumers in a fun and engaging way is the recipe for a well done ad.
After this latest marketing success, we look forward to seeing what innovations Apple will wow us with next in 2025.
