In late 1983 Apple had a new computer and a problem. The Macintosh was a very different machine, with a mouse and a graphical screen, and it was going up against IBM, which dominated the personal computer market. Apple needed people to see the Mac not as another computer, but as a rebellion.
The idea
The concept came from Steve Hayden, Brent Thomas and Lee Clow at Apple’s agency, Chiat/Day. It borrowed from George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, with its dystopian future ruled by a televised “Big Brother.” The timing wrote itself: the Mac would launch in the real 1984.
The agency hired Ridley Scott, whose film Blade Runner had come out about a year and a half earlier, to direct.
What the ad shows
In a gray, blue-tinted industrial world, rows of shaven-headed workers march through a tunnel and sit before a giant screen, where Big Brother lectures them. A young woman, in full color, runs in with a sledgehammer, chased by riot police. She spins and hurls the hammer into the screen, which explodes in light.
Then the text: “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984’.”
The runner was played by English athlete Anya Major, and Big Brother by David Graham. It was filmed in England. Accounts of the budget vary widely: The New York Times reported about $370,000, a later writer put it at $900,000, and Scott himself said it cost less than $250,000. The actors playing the workers were paid $25 a day, and Scott said he used local skinheads as the pale, marching drones.
The board said no
Steve Jobs and CEO John Sculley loved the finished film. When it was screened for Apple’s board of directors in December 1983, the board hated it. Chiat/Day had booked 90 seconds of Super Bowl airtime. It resold 30 seconds to another advertiser and told Apple it could not sell the remaining 60, which, as it later emerged, it had not really tried to do. So the ad ran.
First, though, Chiat/Day made sure it would be eligible for awards. It ran the ad on December 31, 1983, on KMVT, a local station in Twin Falls, Idaho, in the last break before midnight, so it counted as a 1983 broadcast for the 1984 Clio Awards.
One national airing
On January 22, 1984, during the third quarter of CBS’s broadcast of Super Bowl XVIII, “1984” aired nationally in the United States. It was the only time. The news coverage that followed, replaying and discussing the ad, gave it far more exposure than the airtime Apple paid for. Two days later, the Macintosh went on sale.
Why it worked
- It sold an enemy. The ad never names IBM, but many viewers read Big Brother as the dominant, conformist computer industry, and Apple as the rebel.
- It didn’t show the product. Viewers never see a Macintosh, which made the launch two days later feel like a reveal.
- It turned an ad into news. Airing once, in the most-watched broadcast of the year, made it an event that news programs covered for free.
- It set the Super Bowl ad era in motion. “1984” is widely credited with turning the Super Bowl into the showcase for big, cinematic commercials.
Legacy
In 1995 the Clio Awards added “1984” to their Hall of Fame, and Advertising Age put it at the top of its list of the 50 greatest commercials. For the Mac’s 20th anniversary in 2004, Apple re-edited it with the runner wearing an iPod.
There’s an irony critics have pointed out since: as Apple grew into one of the most powerful companies in the world, it came to look less like the runner and more like the screen. But as a piece of advertising, few commercials have matched its ambition, or its return on 60 seconds of airtime.