iPhone billboards swap perfection for everyday chaos

Apple’s “Relax, it’s iPhone” platform ditches the usual gleaming studio shots, and shows smeared, soaked and slobbered-on iPhones getting on with ordinary life.

The campaign features a variety of executions.

A spaniel grips an Phone between its teeth….a phone balances precariously on a bathtub faucet while its owner soaks nearby.

In another a toddler smears fruit puree across a camera lens.

The campaign also highlights the ‘find my phone’ feature.

None of the wear is played as damage; each shot is staged to prove the phone can survive it.

Apple creative Ben Martin, who created the series with Kendal Bagwell, explained the shift on LinkedIn: “It’s the first time we’ve taken the platform into OOH,” adding that the chance to rough up one of the world’s most recognised industrial designs is rare.

The work is running now across New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, arriving weeks after Apple’s surreal Clingers ad took its privacy message to a similarly unexpected register.