Conan Roasts iPad 2: You'll Buy It No Matter What We Say [Video]
With every new Apple product launch, there's now an expectation that we're going to get a video made by Apple to help explain the product. You know the ones. They feature Apple executives (though, oddly, never CEO Steve Jobs) …
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's iPad 2 launch arrives wrapped in the ritual TechCrunch describes: an executive-narrated promotional video, the format that has become an expected part of every Apple hardware release since Steve Jobs demoed the original iPad at The Wall Street Journal more than a year earlier. That predictability is precisely what makes the launch legible enough to satirize — the company's own enthusiasm playbook was already being analyzed here back in 2009 in a piece on why enthusiasm matters in any product.
The joke lands against a backdrop of unusually dense Apple activity on this date alone: the iPad 2's confirmed launch video, an early-2011 MacBook Pro refresh reviewers call one of the most aggressive in that machine's history, and impending iOS 4.3. Notably, reviewers have panned both iPad 2 cameras as rudimentary next to Apple's iPhone cameras — which is exactly the gap Conan O'Brien's bit skewers, framing consumers as buying regardless of what critics say.
First-order effects
- Conan O'Brien's parody circulates the same week as Apple's actual iPad 2 promotional video, extending the reach of the launch's imagery to a late-night audience at no cost to Apple.
- Reviewers' criticism of the iPad 2's cameras now competes with a comedic frame that pre-emptively dismisses such criticism as irrelevant to purchase decisions.
Second-order effects
- Competing tablet makers launching into this news cycle must position against not just Apple's hardware but its marketing saturation — a rival launch without comparable cultural echo looks smaller by default.
- Free amplification from mainstream comedy rewards Apple's formulaic video style, reinforcing rather than correcting the template executives like Phil Schiller narrate.
Third-order effects
- If product launches keep hardening into recognizable cultural rituals, Apple's marketing format becomes a durable brand asset in its own right — something rivals cannot replicate by matching specs alone, and a signal that the company's real moat includes how its releases are received, not just what they contain.
The trend: Apple product launches are maturing into cultural events whose marketing conventions are widely enough recognized to sustain mainstream satire, turning the company's promotional discipline into a competitive asset.