Who's left to mock Apple in its ads? Why, Lyft
In launching its Carstache 2.0, Lyft decides it must share something in common with so many other tech companies: laughing at Apple and, in this case, Jony Ive.
It's a rite of passage for any tech company.
If you want to be taken seriously, you have to make jokes about Apple. Because if you don't, then who are you?
That, at least, seems to have been the dominant advertising trope of recent years.
Samsung, Microsoft, Nokia have all risen to vast heights by mocking Cupertino's self-righteousness -- or at least its products, so beloved by so many, but allegedly so inferior.
Why, though, would a ride-sharing service believe that it, too, should drive down this merry lane?
This is technology. "Why" doesn't matter as much as, well, "How much."
So here we have a man who doesn't dress like Apple's Jony Ive, but makes a passable impersonation at his voice.
His aim is to show that Lyft's new pink car mustache is so much more technically advanced than its previous versions.
It's more "intuitive" and "elegant" than the 1.0 version. The designers allegedly examined everything from the pinkness of each hair to the curvature of every mustache tip.
It even has a new clip-on system that "sets a new standard for mustache-vehicle interfacing."
It's all mild fun in its way. But what might it do for the Lyft brand?
I've always thought the pink mustaches tend to touch tackiness, as if the cars that sport them have just been to an especially raucous bachelorette party in Hackensack, NJ, that involved a communal waxing.
But the heavy Lyfters must have had some amusement making this opus.
They should only hope that Apple hasn't secretly patented "ad with man talking in English accent against a white background."