1984 (television commercial)

"1984" is the title of the television commercial that launched the Apple Macintosh personal computer in the United States, in January 1984.

The commercial aired on January 22, 1984 during a break in the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII. The ad showed an unnamed heroine (played by Anya Major) wearing orange shorts, red running shoes, and a white tank top with a Picasso-style picture of Apple's Macintosh computer, running through an Orwellian world to throw a sledgehammer at a TV image of Big Brother — an implied representation of IBM. The concluding screen showed the message and voice over "On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like '1984'." At the end, the Apple "rainbow bitten apple" logo is shown on a black background.

Creation

The 60-second film was created by the advertising agency Chiat/Day, with copy written by Steve Hayden and direction by Ridley Scott (who had just finished filming Blade Runner). Creative director Lee Clow was responsible for this and the later Energizer Bunny and Taco Bell chihuahua campaigns.

The film was shot in London and most of the actors were British skinheads hired for the day at a cost of 125 USD each as the director was unable to find enough actors prepared to shave their heads. The original script had suggested a baseball bat but this was later revised to a sledgehammer. The weight of the hammer made it difficult to cast the part of the runner but Anya Major (a discus thrower) applied for the part and was chosen.

It was shown to a large audience for the first time in October 1983, at Apple's annual sales conference in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Based on their initial reaction, Apple executives booked two slots during the upcoming Super Bowl. However, the Apple board of directors was dismayed by the ad and instructed management not to show it and sell the slots. Despite of the board's dislike of the film Steve Wozniak watched it and offered to pay for the spot personally if the board refused to air it.

A perhaps apocryphal story has Apple only able to sell one slot and then deciding that they might as well use the other and show the ad. It aired at the first commercial break after the second-half kick-off.

In reality, the reason the commercial was saved from total cancellation was the result of an act of defiance and an act of bravado. According to the book The Mac Bathroom Reader by Owen Linzmayer:

The board hadn't demanded the commercial be killed, nonetheless Sculley asked Chiat/Day to sell back the one and one half minutes of Super Bowl television time that they had purchased. The original plan was to play the full-length, 60-second 1984 spot to catch everyone's attention, then hammer home the message during a subsequent commercial break with an additional airing of an edited 30-second version.

Defying Sculley's request, Jay Chiat told his media director, Camille Johnson, "Just sell off the thirty." Johnson laughed, thinking it would be impossible to sell any of the time at so late a date, but miraculously, she managed to find a buyer for the 30-second slot. That still left Apple with a 60-second slot for which it had paid $800,000.

The decision whether to run the commercial was left to VP of Marketing William V. Campbell and Executive VP of Marketing and Sales E. Floyd Kvamme. In the end, the two decided to run the commercial. Despite costing $800,000 USD to make and a further $800,000 of air time, the film was originally shown nationally only once. However, it was aired on television one other time. From the book Apple Confidential:

The famous "1984" commercial that launched the Macintosh during the Super Bowl in 1984 is purported to have been shown only once; but to qualify for 1983's advertising awards, the commercial also aired on December 15 at a small TV station in Twin Falls, Idaho, and in movie theaters for weeks starting on January 17th.

Even with this limited appearance, the ad created such a media frenzy that it gained many subsequent free TV airings and print mentions as it was discussed in the media. At the time Nielsen ratings estimated that the commercial reached 46.4 percent of American households (50 percent of all men and 36 percent of women.) These tactics are part of what made the commercial so influential in marketing circles; it is now seen as the first example of event marketing, and is popularly credited with starting the trend of yearly "event" Super Bowl commercials.

Source material

The commercial was influenced by the book "Nineteen Eighty-Four" by George Orwell. The dystopic future and the Big Brother figure both stem from this novel.

Setting

The heroine wears orange shorts, red running shoes, a white tank top with a Picasso-style picture of Apple's Macintosh computer, and a white sweat band on her left wrist and a red one on her right. She is carrying a large sledgehammer and running quickly through a dystopian, industrial scene chased by four security guards.

The guards wear black, paramilitary uniforms and helmets with visors covering their faces. They are armed with large night sticks.

She is running towards a large hall filled with people with shaved heads, sitting on benches facing a large video screen. All the audience members appear to be male. At least one child is among the viewers.

On the screen, the giant image of the man speaking in loud tones exhorts the audience to support his cause. Computer-generated text and numbers overlay his image.

Dialogue

"Big Brother": "Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests purveying contradictory thoughts. Our Unification of Thought is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people. With one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!"

Announcer: "On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like '1984.'"

Even though it is not in quotes in the commercial, the announcer pronounces "Macintosh" as if it were. Apple later revised their style manual to refer to the computer with an article, "the Macintosh".

Some sources quote the Big Brother dialogue as having an expanded introduction and other slight word changes. The alternate dialogue is listed below; however, the bolded text did not appear in the January 1984 version of the ad.

"My friends, each of you is a single cell in the great body of the State. And today, that great body has purged itself of parasites. We have triumphed over the unprincipled dissemination of facts. The thugs and wreckers have been cast out. And the poisonous weeds of disinformation have been consigned to the dustbin of history. Let each and every cell rejoice! For ^*oday, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directive! We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology, where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thought is a more powerful weapon than any fleet or army on Earth. We are one people. With one will. One resolve. One cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death. And we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!""

Influence

The commercial is frequently voted top in surveys of influential marketing campaigns. For example, Advertising Age named it the 1980s "Commercial of the Decade", and in 1999 the US TV Guide selected it as number one in their list of "50 Greatest Commercials of All Time".

The film resurfaced in the late 1990s when Apple made a QuickTime version of the commercial available for download from the Internet. It appeared numerous times on television commercial compilation specials, as well as on Nick At Nite during its "Retromercial" breaks.

In popular culture

Triumph of the Nerds - this 1996 documentary gives a history of this commercial and includes actual flm clips of it
"We Be Clubbin'" - this 1998 Ice Cube music video from the soundtrack to the film The Players Club features a reenactment of the advertisement, with Ice Cube portraying both runner and the Big Brother character
Pirates of Silicon Valley - this 1999 docudrama about the rise of the personal computer begins with Steve Jobs talking to Ridley Scott during filming of this commercial and includes actual film clips of it
Fight Club - in the 1999 film, one of Project Mayhem's acts of vandalism is the destruction of a display of Apple Macintosh computers (the explosion occurs at exactly 84 minutes into the film, an ironic reference to this commercial)
Futurestock - this 2002 episode of Futurama includes a parody of this commercial where Big Brother is represented by Mom, from Mom's Friendly Delivery Service, with a modified speech containing statements such as "Our enemies shall be eaten by squirrels!"
iPod advertisement - in 2004, on the twentieth anniversary of the Macintosh's introduction, Apple showed an altered version of the 1984 commercial on its website, with an Apple iPod digitally inserted onto the shorts of the woman.

References

Lee Clow's page about the 1984 ad - Creative Director for Chiat/Day advertising agency at the time.
Folklore.org: 1984, how the famous commercial almost got canceled.

External links

Apple Computer advertising | Television commercials | Cultural studies | Steve Jobs

1984 (publicité) | 1984 (תשדיר פרסומת) | 1984 (televíziós reklám)

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