<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Apple's advertisements have been criticized a lot in recent months, but now the latest critic happens to be a former Apple insider.\nJean-Louis Gass\u00E9e, a former Apple executive who oversaw the development of the company's Macintosh computers in the late 1980s before launching his own company, penned a column for The Guardian on Monday, in which he slammed Apple's Siri commercials for being \"the great execution of a terrible concept\" that could ultimately hurt the company.\n\"Until the Siri celebrity campaign, Apple products had always been the focus of Apple marketing. The product is the hero, the ad extolls what it does and how it does it,\"\u00A0Gass\u00E9e writes in his column. To be sure, Apple has used celebrities in advertisements before (like the Mac vs. PC ads), but\u00A0Gass\u00E9e's argument seems to be that the increasing use of celebrities like Zooey Deschanel, Samuel L. Jackson and Martin Scorsese is taking away the focus from the product itself.\n\"They're smart and well-produced, they're flatteringly imitable \u2013 and Samsung must love them,\" Gass\u00E9e\u00A0writes. \"Why?\u00A0Because they're pernicious: they dilute the focus, they detract from Apple products' own well-deserved and well-earned celebrity.\"\nFor these reasons, Gass\u00E9e argues that the Siri ads \"should be yanked\" from the air completely.\u00A0This wouldn't be the first time Apple pulled an ad campaign this year. The company quickly nixed its Genius commercials\u00A0last month after they were panned online (though Apple's advertising agency claimed the ads were only intended for a first run.)\nIt doesn't help that the feature being advertised in these commercials has been panned by many inside and outside Apple. Earlier this year, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak\u00A0said he was \"very disappointed\" with Siri. Likewise,\u00A0Gass\u00E9e\u00A0cites one anonymous Apple employee who says that no one at Apple actually uses Siri.\nWhether or not Gass\u00E9e is right,\u00A0there's a pretty good chance Apple will move away from the Siri commercials in the coming weeks anyway.\u00A0Once Apple announces the iPhone 5 on Wednesday, as it's expected to do, the company will likely launch a new set of advertisements to highlight the latest iPhone's standout features like LTE connectivity, rather than Siri.\nDo you think Apple's Siri commercials are really that bad? Let us know in the comments!\nImage courtesy of YouTube"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2012/09/10/ex-apple-exec-pull-siri-ads/>