It's extremely rare for an Apple CEO to narrate one of the company's commercials personally. Steve Jobs did it once for the famous "Here's to the Crazy Ones" ad as part of the company's "Think Different" campaign in 1997, but the Jobs version never made it to air.
That means Tim Cook became the first leader of the world's most valuable technology company to put his voice into an actual ad campaign on Monday, when Apple released a 90-second film called "Better" (watch above). The ad focuses on everything the Cupertino giant is doing to reduce its carbon footprint, from using less packaging to recycling its products to building data centers powered entirely by solar energy.
"To us, 'better' is a force of nature," Cook says in the ad. "Now, more than ever, we will work to leave the world better than we found it." His point is reinforced with beautiful imagery of a solar panel array, and various shots of trees interwoven with Apple products under construction.
It would be easy to dismiss the ad as greenwashing — it's a little too slick in its visuals — but it turns out Cook actually has a lot to crow about when it comes to the environment. Last month's Greenpeace report on the technology sector, "Clicking Clean" [PDF], singled out Apple for "significant improvements in their energy transparency" and called it "the most improved company" in the annual report.
Cook has publicly committed Apple to using 100% renewable energy in all of its facilities as soon as possible. More than three quarters of its buildings use renewable energy already, up from one quarter under Jobs. The company hired the former head of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, to oversee its sustainability efforts in 2013. It has also committed itself to using green materials in its computers under the EPEAT standard.
The company made a large-scale investment in a solar array outside its North Carolina data center in 2012, pressured the state utility Duke Energy to offer electricity from renewable sources to all corporate customers, and recently announced it would use geothermal power for its new Reno data center. "Apple has done the most of any data center operator to make its part of the internet green," Greenpeace spokesman and report co-author David Pomerantz said.
The CEO made his passion on the subject of climate change clear in February during the company's annual shareholder meeting.
Cook was faced with with repeated questions from a conservative think tank that is skeptical of mainstream climate science findings. The group wanted to know why he would voluntarily go further than EPA standards and whether environmentalism was good for profits. In response, Cook got briefly and uncharacteristically angry.
"When I think about making our products accessible for the people that can’t see or to help a kid with autism, I don’t think about a bloody ROI," the CEO said. "By the same token, I don’t think about helping our environment from an ROI point of view."
So there's good reason to think that Cook is as genuine as Jobs was in his ad narration; reportedly, the Apple cofounder choked up while recording the "Here's to the Crazy Ones" ad (which you can watch below). What remains to be seen is whether an ad like "Better" brings in any more customers — or whether technology users who care about the environment are all using Apple products anyway.
Of course, it's entirely possible that Cook doesn't care about getting a "bloody ROI" on this ad. We've reached out to Apple to find out more about the campaign.
IMAGE: APPLE