The Ad that Changed Everything
Why 1984 turned out to be nothing like 1984
New season, new SB ads-digital age started with Mac…
Thirty years ago, before the start of Super Bowl 18, (or XVIII if you speak Latin) Apple ran its iconic “1984” Ad announcing the birth of the Macintosh computer. The effectiveness of adverting has been debated since the first cave painting, but this ad, which only was only broadcast once, could be considered the most transformative in history.
In 1984 (the year, not the ad) the cold war was raging, the flower children of the “’60s were becoming the corporate raiders of ’80s, and computers were room-sized behemoths that sported the IBM logo, the domain of big business, the military and James Bond villains.
Personal computers were of interest only to hobbyist and brainy, socially inept, shut-ins.
“1984” (the ad not the book) was a mini Indie film. Gray men file into an auditorium dominated by a large B&W TV where an equally gray giant talking head is extolling the virtues of conformity. Suddenly a female runner, in living color, bursts through the crowd and launches a sledgehammer towards the giant screen, shattering it as the scene goes to white. It ends with a shot of the first Macintosh, and the line “See why 1984 will not be like 1984” (If you don’t get that literary reference, please Google “George Orwell’s 1984”).
The ad, which was almost pulled by Apple’s board of directors before Jobs and Steve Wozniak offered to pay for it out of their own pockets, had far-reaching implications.
It made Super Bowl ads hip and almost as anticipated as the game.
Ads became more about narratives and less like sales pitches — nowhere does Apple talk about features and benefits…selling the Mac was as much about attitude than it was about technology — a good thing because those first generation Macs were very limited.
The Macintosh changed how people interacted with technology with it’s graphically based interface (icons) and the mouse gave users an alternative to the keyboard for giving commands.\
The interface was so popular that Microsoft was forced to develop Windows — I can remember PC users who dismissed the MAC and its interface as a joy jumping for joy when they got own set of icons.
All of this paved the way for internet browsers, touch screens, tablets and smartphones
Apple would eventually become the largest corporation in the world. The same experts who derided Jobs as a head in the clouds, pie in the sky, hippie peace freak would laud him as the “visionary leader of the technology sector” by the time of his premature death from Pancreatic cancer. He the one thing they respect— he made tons of money.
Much has been written about Jobs since his death, as he now held up as a paragon of American business, but as CEOs the world over mine his biography for the secrets of his success they probably miss the point. Jobs was successful for two reasons. He was the prototypical Apple customer in that he saw technology had the means to do cool stuff and not an end unto itself. Jobs never failed to trust his instincts—he defied his Board and ran the ad.
So as you’re watching this year’s Super Bowl ads and you get tired of the all the dudes and babes, cheetahs and Clydesdales, you may want to want to take out that smartphone, tablet or laptop, google “Apple Super Bowl Ad, 1984” and see what started it all.
