Apple has launched a new global privacy campaign focused on Safari, its web browser, with which it once again defends the protection of personal data as one of the strategic territories of its brand. Under the title “Clingers”, the company dramatizes the online tracking ecosystem that accompanies users while they browse the Internet and contrasts the privacy functions of Safari with other browsers, such as Chrome, more exposed to the activity of trackers, search engines, extensions or social widgets.
Data sniffers appear dressed in chrome-colored jumpsuits and literally attach themselves to people
The campaign, created by TBWAMedia Arts Lab, is part of the “Privacy. That’s iPhone” platform, a communication line that Apple activated in 2019 and which has since addressed different aspects of digital privacy. On this occasion, the focus is on web browsing, an environment in which a large part of the data economy is based on the observation of user behavior, often without them being fully aware of who is following them, what information is collected or for what purposes it is used.
The spot thus presents the data trackers as characters dressed in chrome-colored jumpsuits who literally cling to people while they browse from phones that are not an iPhone. They sit on your shoulders in a library, accompany you while you walk your dogs, or gather around those who use browsers other than Safari. Visual discomfort is the metaphor with which Apple translates an invisible and technical practice into a physical, absurd and disturbing presence.
The piece also plays with an indirect reference to Chrome through the aesthetics of the characters, described in some scenes as figures of chrome look. The comparison is articulated in humor, but the message is that while other browsers allow trackers to follow the user around the internet, Safari is designed to block them by default. Thus, when one of the protagonists switches to Safari, the clingers abruptly disappear, visualizing the promise of protection that Apple wants to associate with its browser.
“Clingers” has been produced by Smuggler and will have a global presence on television, outdoor advertising, digital display, social networks, cinema, YouTube and Apple.com.
It also arrives on the eve of Apple’s WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference), a moment usually associated with software updates and new ecosystem functions.
