The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2018
Apple's 'Welcome Home' expands a cramped flat with music — Cannes Grand Prix
Spike Jonze turned HomePod's selling point into choreography: FKA twigs dances a tiny apartment into boundless color — a Grand Prix for music.
Apple · TBWA\Media Arts Lab
What it had to solve
HomePod, Apple's first smart speaker, launched in February 2018 into a market Amazon and Google already owned. Its real edge was audio quality, but specs don't sell speakers; the launch film had to make people feel the difference music makes in a small home.
How it works
When Apple launched HomePod in February 2018, it was late to the smart-speaker category and priced at $349. Its edge was sound quality and the Apple ecosystem, but a speaker's quality is hard to convey in a spec sheet. The launch needed an emotional argument: what music does to a room, and to the person in it.
'Welcome Home', a four-minute film directed by Spike Jonze for TBWA\Media Arts Lab, starred FKA twigs. She comes home after a long day, drops her bag, asks HomePod to play Anderson .Paak's 'Til It's Over' — and her cramped, gray apartment begins to move. Walls stretch, rooms split open, and the space floods with color as she dances, the architecture bending to the music.
The transformation was the message: a small home doesn't get bigger when you buy a speaker — but the feeling of being at home can. 'Welcome Home' won the Entertainment Lions for Music Grand Prix at Cannes 2018, took a DGA Award for Jonze, and was honored in the Immortal Awards' inaugural year, and it remains one of the most-celebrated brand films of the decade.
Why it lands
- The film never mentioned specs, price or Siri; it sold the emotional payoff of better sound — the room itself became the product demonstration.
- Jonze's magical realism made the benefit physical: viewers watch the apartment expand, so they feel the claim rather than hear it.
- Staging it as a four-minute film rather than a 30-second spot let the idea breathe and rewarded repeat viewing and sharing.
- Casting FKA twigs and Anderson .Paak gave the film cultural credibility beyond advertising, so it was discussed as music and film, not as a commercial.
What it did
The film won the Entertainment Lions for Music Grand Prix at Cannes 2018, earned Jonze a DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Commercials, and took a prize in the Immortal Awards' inaugural year — discussed worldwide as one of the decade's most celebrated brand films.
What you can take
When the benefit is emotional, prove it through a metaphor the audience can feel — here, space expanding with music — instead of listing features.
Since then
'Welcome Home' became Apple's most celebrated HomePod marketing and a benchmark for music-driven brand film. It helped sustain TBWA\Media Arts Lab's run of award-winning Apple work and contributed to Apple being named Cannes Lions Creative Marketer of the Year in 2019. The original HomePod was eventually discontinued, but the film outlived the product, still cited by creative directors as a masterclass in making a functional product feel transcendent.
Sources
- Apple Shares 'Welcome Home' HomePod Ad Directed by Spike Jonze and Starring FKA Twigs
- Apple Inc. announced as highly-coveted 2019 Cannes Lions Creative Marketer of the Year
- My Most Immortal Ad: Taj Critchlow on Apple HomePod's Welcome Home
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