Apple drops Dalai Lama from ad campaign

- Apple has pulled an ad featuring the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama as he is deemed too 'obscure', according to a report in the South China Morning Post.

The ad had been intended to run as part of the computer manufacturer's Asian leg of its "Think Different" campaign.

Vincent Lum, Apple's Asia-Pacific marketing director, told the Hong Kong based paper that a portrait of the Dalai Lama was not to be used and that the company was "sticking to those who are well-known".

However, a spokesman for the exiled Tibetan leader was reported as rejecting Apple's claim and accused the computer company of bowing to pressure from the Chinese government in Beijing, which rules over Tibet.

The spokesman for the Dalia Lama said: "I think that Apple Computer does not want to offend the Chinese."

The five famous people who will appear in the highly praised ad campaign in Asia are Alfred Hitchcock, Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Mahatma Gandhi, and Amelia Earhart, the woman pilot lost over the Pacific in 1937.

The South China Morning Post story went on to quote a Hong Kong University pollster, Robert Chung Ting-yiu, who said there 'is no way Amelia Earhart could be better known than the Dalai Lama' in the region.