There are things we do not see on the internet, but still carry with us all the time. Every click, every page, every search can leave a trace for someone trying to follow us from one place to another. Apple has turned that invisible discomfort into a very visible scene in its new campaign.
At the center of the global campaign is the film Clingers, in which online trackers appear as strange, persistent characters in silver tracksuits. They do not stay only on the screen. They follow users in everyday life, peek over their shoulders, ride on their backs and become increasingly intrusive as the story develops.
The campaign promotes privacy tools built into Safari, including Intelligent Tracking Prevention and Fingerprint Defense. These features are enabled by default, and their goal is to limit user tracking across different websites and reduce the amount of information by which a device could be individually recognized.
The film was developed by the agency TBWA\Media Arts Lab and directed by Ivan Zacharias from the production company Smuggler. The same team was also behind last year’s Apple privacy film Flock, in which internet spies were shown as flying security cameras in the shape of birds. That work later won the Craft of the Year award at the Ad Age Creativity Awards 2025.
What makes Clingers especially memorable is the way it turns a serious topic into an almost absurd physical situation. Online tracking is not explained here through technical language, but through a feeling. If someone follows you down the street, enters your space and watches every move you make, it becomes clear why privacy stops being an abstract topic.
The creative idea does not stay only in the main film. Part of the campaign is also the digital extension Tracker Invasion, in which the same characters appear inside online ad formats and digital environments, as if they are watching users while they browse. In this way, the media format itself becomes part of the message about online tracking.
The campaign continues the Privacy. That’s iPhone platform, which Apple has been developing since 2019 and which has become one of the brand’s most recognizable communication directions. The new work will appear on television, in out-of-home advertising, digital display, social media, cinemas, YouTube and Apple’s website.
At a time when the conversation about data often gets lost in technical terms, Apple once again chooses a simple creative logic. If online tracking is difficult to explain, perhaps it is enough to show it as a group of people who cling to your back and do not let go until Safari stops them.
