Adobe Tries Killing Apple with Kindness

The public dispute between Apple and Adobe over whether or not Flash should be ported over to the iPhone OS has took a turn for the silly, and we couldn't be more happy about it. In case you're not up to speed, the situation is this: Steve Jobs had some harsh things to say about Adobe's Flash, including the platform's poor performance and negative impact on battery life. In a lengthy open letter, Jobs listed out several reasons why Apple has been reluctant to allow Flash to run on its iPhone OS, while also using the opportunity to champion HTML5. While some of his points were valid, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen called the criticisms a "smokescreen" in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, but had little else negative to say about Apple.


So what has Adobe done since then? At first, Adobe threw in the towel. In an official blog post, Adobe's Mike Chambers lashed out at Apple for its decision to shun Flash, and Chambers vowed to "shift all of my mobile focus from iPhone to Android based device and not focus on the iPhone stuff as much anymore." As it turns out, Chambers' comments may have been a bit of a knee-jerk reaction, because Adobe is apparently still interested in porting Flash to the iPhone OS, despite earlier reports to the contrary.


In a new marketing campaign, Adobe is reminding the world that it still has love for Apple, even if the feeling isn't mutual. As such, the company has started running ads in newspapers and technology blogs declaring "We Love Apple" with a big, red heart (see above). Specifically, here's how the entire ad reads:
So far the ad has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and more than a dozen other newspapers, as well as several online tech blogs, including CNN.com. How much Adobe plans to spend on the ad campaign isn't known, but what we do know is we love this tactic. Some might see it as a desperate move by a company with little or no recourse, but if you ask us, this is a brilliant marketing strategy that could ultimately cast Apple as the bad guy in the public's perception, which isn't something Apple is accustomed to outside of the Windows-based PC camp.