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You know Apple’s 1984 commercial. You’ve seen Apple’s 1984 commercial. Heck, it’s widely accepted that the 1984 commercial is one of the best ads of all time. But did you know it was almost cancelled by Apple before it ever aired?
Of course, it wasn’t almost cancelled by Steve Jobs, who loved the ad. It was almost cancelled by the suits sitting on Apple’s board. Former Apple board member Mike Markkula actually wanted to fire ChiatDay (the ad agency who handled Apple marketing at the time) because the commercial was so bad and CEO-at-the-time John Sculley told ChiatDay to just sell the Super Bowl airtime Apple purchased instead of using it for the commercial. EVERYONE ON THAT BOARD HATED IT.
ChiatDay only ended up selling 1 of the 2 airtime slots they had (refusing to sell the other and lying to Apple that it was too late to sell). So Apple begrudgingly held on, it had paid for everything already, after all.
The best part of the story is when Woz heard that the commercial was in trouble, he told Jobs that he would pay half the $800,000 it cost for the airtime to save the commercial if Jobs would pay the other half. The lesson, as always, Woz is the awesome. Read more about Apple’s 1984 Super Bowl commercial at Mental Floss. [Mental Floss]
I’m still waiting for the post saying that Steve Jobs could have solved the energy crisis (mostly due to the sun shining out of his backside).
You should put a health warning out before posting things that funny.
“Best Super Bowl Commercial” does sound just a bit biased.
I am far from an Apple fan, but Ridley Scott kicks ass, the tension and release in that advert is amazing, better than any short film could do, the whole concept of 1984 in 1984 is given this strange surreal make over. This advert got played on the news because it was so stunning for its time, and talked about so much, and named advert of the decade. IMO best advert ever.
The modern irony of those words:
“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 truths. Our Unification of Thoughts 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!”
While Apple was saying this about the mainstream tech world in 1984, others could do the same about Apple and and its iDeology today.
And on a minor note the master of Orwellian dystopia was born in 1984, Mark ‘I was only trying to get a blowjob’ Zuckerberg – it is like he was listening to the words of that advert in the womb.
The lesson in fact is that Woz and the people at the ad agency saved this commercial. Even though Steve supposedly “loved it” it doesn’t appear he was willing to fight for it. Its also somewhat ironic given the 1984 references that the other Apple story today is about it’s prudish censorship practices.
Ironic that Apple are the ones that want to control how you use their devices now.