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Can Apple’s new iMessage ad convince you that stickers are as cool as Snapchat?

Can Apple’s new iMessage ad convince you that stickers are as cool as Snapchat?

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Probably not

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Apple’s latest iPhone ad debuted today, and it’s focused on highlighting the Stickers feature that came to iMessage with iOS 10. As to be expected from an Apple ad, it’s a highly polished production, featuring a slew of diverse and attractive young adults running around their town, slapping animated iMessage stickers on the various and sundry inhabitants and locations.

In an age where Snapchat reigns supreme among “the teens,” it feels a lot like Apple is trying to show that it, too, can be cool and fun and rebellious. But a lot of that message gets lost under trying to figure out exactly what this is advertising amid all the stickers getting flung everywhere.

Or, to put it another way, the ad is a lot like Apple’s actual implementation of Stickers in iMessage: bright and colorful and clearly meant to appeal to teens, but ultimately hard to see beneath the veneer of animated robots and images plastered everywhere.