A billboard in Milan showing a toddler holding an iPhone is gone, replaced within days by new creative promoting Find My, after Italy’s children’s rights watchdog referred the ad to three separate regulators. Apple hasn’t explained the swap publicly, but the timing leaves little doubt about the cause.
The billboard, located on via Melchiorre Gioia, was part of Apple’s long-running “Relax, it’s iPhone” campaign, known in Italy by the tagline “Tutto ok, è iPhone.” The series has always leaned on the same joke: an iPhone survives situations that would wreck any other phone. The latest wave of billboards showed a phone getting soaked in heavy rain, one nudged off a table by a cat, and another carried around in a dog’s mouth. The toddler execution was meant to land the same way, implying that parents don’t need to panic if a small child gets hold of the device.
It didn’t land that way, the Autorità Garante per l’Infanzia e l’Adolescenza, Italy’s child-welfare watchdog known as AGIA, received a complaint from a citizen who argued the image normalized “electronic babysitting.” AGIA’s own statement went further than a typical regulatory complaint, calling out the ad by name and arguing it ran counter to a global conversation about minimum ages for children’s access to digital devices.
While countries around the world have long been discussing minimum ages for access to digital technology, this advertisement seems to be moving in exactly the opposite direction, normalizing something that unfortunately we see with worrying frequency: very young children being entrusted to “electronic babysitting,” which can mark the beginning of a possible addiction with serious consequences for their psychological and cognitive development.
AGIA didn’t stop at the durability message either, warning that the ad’s framing could be read as endorsing a practice it considers harmful regardless of intent.
You may think this advert promotes the durability of your device, but it could also be seen as promoting its improper use. All too often, the modern smartphone becomes a pacifier for children.
the agency didn’t claim Apple invented the problem. It acknowledged that children being handed phones to keep them occupied is a widespread pattern that exists “with or without this advert or regulation,” but argued that phone manufacturers shouldn’t be reinforcing it, even as a joke.
AGIA referred the case to three bodies: AGCOM, Italy’s communications regulator; AGCM, the country’s competition authority; and IAP, its advertising self-regulatory institute, asking each for “appropriate reviews and any potential action.” That’s a wider net than most ad complaints get in Italy, and it signals AGIA wanted the issue examined from multiple angles at once, communications standards, competition and consumer protection, and industry self-regulation, rather than leaving it to a single agency.
Prima Comunicazione and Repubblica Milano were first to report that Apple had already swapped the billboard for a new one promoting Find My. Repubblica Milano’s own summary of the change was blunt: “A Milano cambiato il maxi manifesto del bambino con in mano l’iPhone: ‘Era un messaggio sbagliato'”, or roughly, “In Milan, the giant billboard of the child holding the iPhone has changed: ‘It was the wrong message.'”
Apple has not issued any public statement explaining the decision, which is itself worth noting given how the company usually handles PR flare-ups. There’s no acknowledgment that the ad was pulled because of AGIA’s complaint, no defense of the original creative, nothing. The removal is left to speak for itself, and in this case it speaks fairly clearly.
The rest of the “Relax, it’s iPhone” series, the rain, the cat, the dog, remains up in Milan as far as the reporting shows. Only the toddler execution was singled out and only that one came down. Apple’s read of the backlash was narrow: the joke about a phone surviving a dog’s mouth is fine, but a joke that reads as endorsing handing a toddler an iPhone touches a nerve regulators and parents alike are already sensitive about.
via 9to5Mac
