THE STORY BEHIND THE APPLE ‘1984’ AD THAT LAUNCHED THE SUPER BOWL COMMERCIAL CRAZE:
The genesis of the commercial did not begin with the computer company. The advertising firm Chiat/Day had a germ of an idea; with the year 1984 looming, they wanted to cut a commercial that personified George Orwell’s novel of the same name/year. The issue was they did not have a client for their idea, but unlike the monolithic agencies in New York, Chiat/Day was headquartered in Los Angeles and as a result of that proximity to the studio system, they were used to pitching and auditions.
The agency was rebuffed by a number of companies, but their idea in search of a product was seen as a perfect fit by Apple head Steve Jobs. For one, he had a new product that would be unrolled in January of the coming year – the MacIntosh personal computer. Another fit for his company was that the biggest competitor in the computing sector was IBM, a market leader so big there was not any competition. Jobs viewed the company as the nefarious Big Brother, and his emerging alternate system could be positioned as the rebellious force.
Jobs wanted a big splash for his new computer, and so, a budget became no problem. Pegged at an already eye-widening budget for its time, the initial outlay of $750,000 swelled to $900,000, and it makes sense that this would be a one-minute production to rival Hollywood standards. Considering the dystopian nature of the material, a motion picture director was tabbed for the shoot. Ridley Scott had recently released his future-noir sci-fi thriller “Blade Runner,” and was hired to deliver the message of an iconoclastic product. His vision was clear and distinct, as we see the storyboards from the conception are very close to the finished product.
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The entire Apple corporate board hated the commercial. One member called for the Chiat/Day agency to be fired, and the board decided not to run the commercial during the Super Bowl, telling the ad team to sell off their time slots. A full minute had been purchased in the game’s third quarter, and a second slot for an edited, 30-second version was to run late in the game. But the agency’s CEO Jay Chiat took a defiant position.
Read the whole thing. 15 years ago there was the coda to the 1984 ad — the callback that Obama’s operatives produced, which was the first salvo to torpedo Hillary’s 2008 presidential bid:
Of course, as now know, both Hillary and Obama read Orwell’s book as a how-to guide:
● How Russiagate Began With Obama’s Iran Deal Domestic Spying Campaign.
● Obama’s Campaign Paid $972,000 To Law Firm That Secretly Paid Fusion GPS In 2016.
Or to put it another way:
