Apple's “Mother Nature” Ad Is The Mother Of All Virtue Signals

DEI/ESG forces companies to playact values they can't truly deliver on.

Once upon a time Apple was a challenger brand known for swinging big at Big Brother (IBM and the PC platform as a whole).

In fact, I spent 12 years at the agency that created their most famous campaigns, led by ad genius, and corporate hippie (in the best sense), my former boss, Lee Clow (at 11:05 Lee talks about Steve Jobs and Apple). I only had the opportunity to work on Apple for a heartbeat. But the agency I worked at, TBWA/Chiat/Day, did some of the most famous, brilliant and cheeky advertising ever done for the now-dominant tech brand.

(Above) Image from the famous, long-running Mac Vs PC campaign.

But my how far the Apple has fallen from the tree.

The latest 5-minute back-patting, hyper self-indulgent exercise posing as a mildly entertaining long form commercial - debuted at the recent Apple event - and shows just how corporatized, and obedient, Apple has become to the dominant ideologies of Big Business today: ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) and DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion).

But I’ll leave the ESG aspect of this ad - and Apple’s claim to soon be “carbon neutral” mostly alone. (That’s all meaningless corporate flatulence, in my humble opinion, too.)

The DEI cosplay in this commercial, is what I want to tackle here.

This ad is a case study in how DEI actually plays out in Big Corp America today: that is to say, it’s largely performative.

In Apple’s spot, the new boss at the Cupertino campus - is Mother Nature - portrayed by a Black woman, actress, Octavia Spencer. Mother Nature is clearly competent and in charge. She controls not just the weather, but also, the biggest company (by valuation) in the world. But only for the 5 minutes and 24 second runtime of the commercial. And only in the fantasy land known as advertising.

Octavia Spencer plays a rather curt Mother Nature in Apple’s new ad.

At first glance, it would appear the image Apple is attempting to project is a win-win: they get to congratulate themselves for their supposed near carbon-neutrality, while also getting to pretend - for all the world to see - how truly diverse their executive team is.

It also affords Tim Cook, a CEO with a net worth north of 1.9 billion, the perfect opportunity to pretend to report to a Black female boss (Mother Nature), allowing him to playact the checking of his “white privilege”. And so that’s what unfolds as we watch Mr. Cook meekly respond to his superior’s curt environmental inquiries, alongside other very diverse Apple executives, who sheepishly do the same.

It’s all so intersectional. So very green. So very very diverse. Except it doesn’t appear to reflect reality.

This is Apple’s actual, not-so-diverse leadership team.

Former EPA Administrator, VP Lisa Jackson, who stars alongside Cook in the film, it appears, is the one notable exception (I could find) of a Black individual who holds a prominent leadership position at Apple.

And let me be clear: Apple should appoint its key leadership based on meritocracy - period. Not based on skin color or gender. And not according to where someone falls on the intersectional totem pole, as DEI demands.

Yet this is precisely what bugs me about the Apple “Mother Nature” ad. It’s a 5-minute-long greenwashed virtue-signal, in which Apple also attempts to score virtue points by projecting the idea that they possess a very diverse leadership team - one that doesn’t appear to actually exist - at least from what I can see on their own website.

One of these things is not like the others.

Are these diverse Apple employees (right) featured in “Mother Nature” real? (If they are, let me know in the comments!)

A (fictional?) Apple employee talks carbon-neutrality and photosynthesis to Mother Nature, but appears to get scolded for mansplaining.

In any case, clearly there’s not much diversity of thought at Apple these days. If there were, perhaps someone would have pointed out how this ad might have come off as so much corporate flexing, but also, hypocrisy. Again, especially given the conspicuous lack of POC leadership featured on Apple’s actual leadership page as compared to what’s conveyed in the ad.

And therein lies the scam of DEI. It’s a ruse. Companies are, in fact, cutting DEI positions today. Yet they want to maintain the public-facing illusion that DEI is a workable corporate initiative when, in fact, it’s not.

In truth, for a corporation to succeed it needs what every successful human endeavor needs: the very best talent - regardless of skin color or political ideology. Yet DEI demands that largely irrelevant human qualities - like melanin levels, who one sleeps with or how they vote - be the determinative factors in whether one is worthy of being hired or promoted.

Additionally, DEI is actually a tool to filter for employees who possess a woke progressive worldview and, conversely, sift out anyone who doesn’t. Which means DEI ensures a form of mental inbreeding, inhibiting the production of diverse ideas and divergent thinking required to make great leaps forward.

Now, contrast the virtue-signaling vibe of Apple’s “Mother Nature” ad with “Think Different”, an Apple commercial whose only reference to itself is a logo at the end for a split second. And unlike how Tim Cook featured himself prominently in “Mother Nature”, Steve Jobs, the brilliant, rebellious mind (that actually birthed the company in his own garage) is nowhere to be found in the “Think Different” ad - even though TBWA/Chiat/Day wanted Jobs’s voice for the spot. (He hated his own vocals and insisted on using actor, Richard Dreyfus.)

Apple’s “Think Different” delivers an absolutely inspired set of words and imagery about creativity and individuality, which stands in total opposition to the edicts of DEI: an ideology that demands groupthink and slavish obedience to woke orthodoxy.

The heroes in “Think Different” are not celebrated for their skin color or gender, but the merits of their achievements - achievements made possible by their divergent/diverse thinking and irrepressible individuality.

And history shows, one individual holding heterodox views with conviction can, indeed, push the human race forward. Whereas ideological conformity can only destroy any hope of progress and human flourishing.

Hence, “Mother Nature” marks the inevitable slow decline of a once-great challenger brand, as it appears to accurately reflect their now ESG/DEI-obedient, conformist corporate culture.

But we ought not be surprised. It’s been a long time since Apple behaved like one of the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the ones who see things differently, much less one of the crazy ones.