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Apple's 'Misunderstood' TV ad for iPhone 5s wins Emmy for Outstanding Commercial

Apple's 'Misunderstood' TV ad for iPhone 5s wins Emmy for Outstanding Commercial

August 18, 2014

Apple has just won a Creative Arts Emmy award for Outstanding Commercial for its “Misunderstood” holiday-themed TV ad for the iPhone 5s, as reported by 9to5Mac.

First aired by Apple in mid-December last year, the winning ad shows a teenage boy being absorbed in his iPhone 5s and seemingly uninterested in his family’s holiday merrymaking. But as we noted in our original article about the commercial:

As it turns out, he’s just been “Misunderstood,” as the ad’s title suggests. Actually, he’s been recording a video of the holiday trip all along. In a touching twist, he puts the resulting video on show for all to see via AirPlay, set to the tune of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Cue the tears.

The ad has since been taken down by Apple from its official YouTube channel, but it thankfully lives on through a video re-upload by another YouTube user. Check it out:

If you can’t see the video embedded above, please click here.

“Misunderstood” bested other ads from other companies nominated in the category, including commercials by Budweiser, General Electric, and Nike.

The ad is the creation of Apple’s longtime advertising collaborator, TBWA\Media Arts Lab. It came out as the second highest-scoring ad in a recent viewer survey comparing Apple TV ads made by TBWA\Media Arts Lab and commercials produced by Apple’s in-house ad team.

The worst-performing ad in the survey was an in-house production: the iPhone 5c ad “Greetings,” which shows a quick succession of colorful folks from around the world using their colorful iPhone 5c devices, which are touted as being “for the colorful.”

Incidentally, “Greetings” was debuted by Apple during the telecast of last year’s Primetime Emmy Awards.

This year’s Primetime Emmy Awards is scheduled for Monday, Aug. 25.

Early last year, Apple won a Technology & Engineering Emmy for creating an “Eco-system for Real Time Presentation of TV Content to Mobile Devices without the use of Specialized Television Hardware,” which apparently referred to the company’s HTTP Live streaming protocol for iOS.

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