No. of Recommendations: 2
The eve news recalled that 39yrs ago today (Jan 24, 1984) Apple released the details on their new personal computer , the 'Macintosh'.
The classic TV add announcing the new Apple Personal Computer ran the previous Sunday at Super Bowl halftime and was very successful raising the bar for future Super Bowl TV adds now running at $7M per 30 sec slot.
The attached links tell the story of how this classic add almost did not run as the Apple Board hated it & only because the Steves (Wosniack & Jobs) were willing to fund it themselves. This classic add has won many awards and is still rated in the top few % of all-time TV advertising.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_(advertisement)
The following link describes the add development & the Apple Board disapproval,
https://9to5mac.com/2023/01/22/apples-iconic-1984-...The news item concluded with the fact that Apple stock that day was post split at 13cents/ share! Ah if we only knew''& Warren at the time😎
ciao
No. of Recommendations: 8
The story is incomplete.
A couple of additions (there are more.) It's widely said the commercial only ran one time. Not true. Chiat/Day ran it one time in late 1983 on a single television station in Iowa so it would qualify for the 1984 advertising awards. If anyone in Iowa noticed, they didn't say anything.
Apple originally booked 3 minutes of commercials in the SuperBowl. When it became clear that the Board was so negative about the ad they tried to re-sell the time to other advertisers, but the decision came so late and the other exclusive categories so vast that they were only able to sell two of the three minutes. At that point, after protests from both Woz and Jobs, the Board folded and agreed the spot could air in the one remaining slot.
The Board hated hated hated the spot itself, but they also felt it was irresponsible to advertise a product which didn't yet exist, and by that point there was still no firm launch date for the Mac.
Focus groups agreed with the Board, saying it reminded them of concentration camps. The focus group results were hidden from everyone, including Jobs and Sculley, until after the commercial had aired.
While the ad cost $500,000 to make (10 times the budget of previous Apple ads) and the airtime a million, after-the-fact estimates of replays on news programs and elsewhere estimated that Apple got almost $50 million in free airtime as a result of the spot.
The bald headed minions in the spot were skinheads, which was cheaper than finding bald SAG actors. They were also a PITA on set, especially when the girl comes running down the aisle, according to Ridley Scott, who produced and shot the ad.
Like I said there's lots more. It is, after all, the mostly widely recognized commercial in the history of television advertising and has been written about almost endlessly. OK, one more. A Chicago lawyer famous for his litigious defense of all things IP has claimed that the spot is a trademark and copyright violation of Orwell's novel, which did not grant permission nor receive a royalty for the imagery or specific use of the phase '1984' used in the context of the Orwell story. (The novel was still under Copyright in, uh, 1984.) I do not know if he ever filed or won a suit, I do know he sent a 'cease and desist' order to Apple which was likely unnecessary given the Board's reaction to the spot anyway.
