 | 1984 television commercial: Encyclopedia II - 1984 television commercial - Creation
1984 television commercial - Creation
The 60-second film was created by the advertising agency Chiat/Day, whose creative director Lee Clow was responsible for this and the later Energizer Bunny and Taco Bell chihuahua campaigns, with copy written by Steve Hayden and directed by Ridley Scott (who had just finished filming Blade Runner).
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 to not show it and sell the slots. 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 (KMVC Channel 11), 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 ad reached nearly half of all the households in America. These guerrilla marketing 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.
Other related archives1980s, 1984, 1990s, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2006, 31 December, 5 January, Advertising Age, Anya Major, Apple, Apple Confidential, Apple Macintosh, Big Brother, Blade Runner, Chiat/Day, Conan O'Brien, Energizer Bunny, Futurama, George Orwell, Honolulu, Hawaii, IBM, Internet, January 22, Leela, Macintosh, Mom, Nick At Nite, Nielsen ratings, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwellian, Picasso, QuickTime, Ridley Scott, Super Bowl XVIII, TV Guide, Taco Bell chihuahua, USD, YTMND, as of, book, dystopic future, guerrilla marketing, iPod, night sticks, novel, personal computer, sledgehammer, tank top, television commercial
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Creation", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
