The world doesn’t really need another blog post about Apple’s ‘1984’ spot, does it?
Every year at around Superbowl time, there are a glut of stories—mostly in ad trade publications—about Apple’s most famous and now nearly thirty year old ad. There were certainly big budget Superbowl ads before ‘1984,’ but that spot had a lot to do with defining what the big budget superbowl spot came to be. High concept. Pure branding. Huge budget. It’s one of the standards against which other Superbowl ads are judged, and a template for others to follow. Heck, Motorola’s Xoom ad from this year was practically a remake of it.
But even if you’re sick of reading or hearing about ‘1984,’ Steve Hayden’s recent piece in Adweek is a fascinating read. Because it’s easy to forget that when they presented ‘1984’ to Apple’s board, everybody on the board of directors hated it and was convinced it would fail. They wanted to fire the ad agency. They demanded that they cancel the expensive superbowl ad buy. And you don’t have to have been there to guess the main reason why: where is the product? Who’s going to buy a computer they haven’t even seen?
So what if Apple’s superbowl spot in ‘1984’ was more like Apple’s ads in 1993—what if the the board killed ‘1984’ and they ran what the board wanted to run: a straightforward product-benefit spot that highlighted the product’s features?
It should give anyone who thinks Apple will be the same company without Steve Jobs’ brave, visionary leadership pause for thought.
Thanks for posting this – it’s a refreshing reminder of why it pays to take risks. And a reminder that what it takes to be a leader (aka Steve Jobs’) is not about pleasing other people and assuaging the masses – it’s about vision. It’s about leading your troops to victory even if they’re scared.
I’m a copywriter. And I worked on the Apple account in the early 90s.
Here is what I know about 1984: As a commercial it is considered high art. As a sales tool it was a total disaster. At the time the spot ran, Apple was trying to get their computers into the business market. Their audience for that sell was the IT guy. And in 1984, almost every IT guy had either worked for or been trained by IBM. Trashing IBM (and suggesting that IT people who used them were mindless drones) did not go over well with this audience. For years, IT managers wouldn’t even consider Apple.
Apple almost went out of business in the 90s because they couldn’t crack the business market — they were a niche player. Mind you, I have been an Apple customer since 1985 and love them. But this slavish mentality about the 1984 spot flies in the face of market reality.
Yeah it is popular with ad people. It was a huge budget production with a director famous for feature movies. An ad man’s orgasmic dream spot. But it didn’t sell.
It did do the job of positioning Apple as the upstart against IBM, but that didn’t help them.
Oh, and who saved Apple’s ass when they were near to going out of business? The real villian of the piece — Microsoft, who invested in Apple enough so that they could get through the darker days. Remember, Microsoft owns a big piece of Apple.
That’s the real story.
Now, did Apple come back with innovative consumer products? Yep.
Did their consumer products become so popular that IT had to deal with them? Yep.
Did 1984 have anything to do with it? Nope.
Mark, that’s an insightful perspective I hadn’t heard before. I do remember Apple’s fruitless attempts to crack the business market. And though it hadn’t occurred to me, I could see how the 1984 spot could be seen as insulting to potential customers. (Though I wonder if those IT guys were more likely to see themselves as the rebel non-conformist hammer thrower than the mindless drones?)
And certainly the spot itself has been fetishized with hindsight.
Good comment. Thanks for the perspective.