Apple’s 1984 Macintosh Super Bowl commercial The greatest of all time
Apple’s 1984 Macintosh Super Bowl commercial. The greatest of all time
38 years ago today, Apple’s iconic 1984 commercial first aired in the Super Bowl of that year.
It was the first time that anyone really outside of Apple heard the name Macintosh, and nearly 4 decades on it’s still recognised as one of the best ads of all time. Lets take a look.
So the commercial was created by Chiat/Day, Apple’s marketing agency at the time, with creative direction by Lee Clow – the man who named the iMac – if you’ve not already read/listened to to it, his book Insanely Simple gives an amazing look behind the scenes at Apple, not just in terms of marketing and advertising but personal anecdotes about Steve Jobs, – I’ll leave a link to both the book and Audible in the description – both help support the channel but that’s not really the point of this video!
UK https://amzn.to/32tal1Q
US https://amzn.to/3AnZLFG
The ad itself was directed by the Blade runner director Ridley Scott and was of course based on the look, feel and themes of George Orwell’s 1984, and we shot in the UK in 1983 in the UK – though the production cost reports vary from $250,000 way up to $900,000, but I’d guess the higher number is simply the adjusted for inflation cost.
The ad casts IBM as Big Brother, the huge corporation which at the time was beginning to take over the industry – and the “IBM Compatible” X86 market did go on to dominate – But this ad cast Apple as the rebellious upstart, the alternative to the mainstream. A message echoed in the “Here’s to the Crazy Ones” Think Different Campaign that TBWA Chiat/Day would create for Apple around 15 years later, after Steve Jobs returned to the company after his time at Pixar and Next.
It’s also similar to Think Different in that it’s an advertisement that doesn’t actually show a product – its purely about Apple’s values and brand position – not how something works, what it can do or how it makes your life better. Its squarely positioning Apple as the underdog and the edgy option. While Apple is still very much the minority in the computer industry with macOS making up around 8% of PC sales, as the biggest company in the world, can Apple still get away with being thought of as the David in a Goliath conflict? If anything, the Intel marketing if you can call it that campaign about the PC vs the Mac that followed the release of M1 shows how intel is worried about Apple taking the lead. How the tables have turned.
In terms of how the ad was received at the time and since, it won the Cleo award and the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival Grand Prix in 1984, joined the Cleo awards hall of fame and was named the Greatest commercial by Ad Age in 1995, TV guide called it the number one greatest commercial of all time in 1999, and was named the best Super Bowl commercial of all time in 2007. Not bad going.
It’s even spawned parodies, in an attack ad against Hillary Clinton in 2008 during her primary run against Barrack Obama with her in the place of Big Brother, It was also parodied by Valve when they announced Half-Life 2 coming to the Mac and by Epic Games, when Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store after they broke their contract terms. It was dropped instantly after Apple removed the game, making it clear that Epic were expecting this outcome from adding their own in-app payments.
So what do you think of Apple’s 1984 ad – has Apple done a more iconic ad since? Let me know in the comments below.
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