Comparative advertising usually means charts, prices and fine print. Apple’s “Get a Mac” campaign did it with two guys standing on a white background, making small talk.
The setup
Each spot opened the same way. A young man in jeans and a hoodie said, “Hello, I’m a Mac.” A slightly older man in a suit and glasses said, “And I’m a PC.” Then, in about 30 seconds of conversation, the PC would reveal some weakness: crashing, catching viruses, struggling with photos and music, or drowning in pop-up warnings. The Mac stayed friendly and calm.
The Mac was played by actor Justin Long and the PC by author and humorist John Hodgman. The ads were created by Apple’s agency TBWA\Media Arts Lab and directed by Phil Morrison, set to a short, bouncy tune called “Having Trouble Sneezing” by Mark Mothersbaugh.
The campaign followed Apple’s “Switch” ads, which had featured real people explaining why they moved from Windows to Mac, starting in 2002.
Why a likeable PC mattered
The trick of the campaign was that Hodgman’s PC was not a villain. He was a well-meaning, slightly stuffy guy who was trying his best, which made it easier for viewers, many of them PC owners, to laugh along rather than feel attacked. Long’s Mac was relaxed but rarely gloated.
Over dozens of spots, the two characters became a running comedy double act. Later ads took aim at Windows Vista, and then Windows 7, as Microsoft’s releases gave Apple new material.
Did it sell Macs?
Apple had seen weaker sales in 2005 and 2006. After the campaign began, the numbers moved: one month in, Apple saw an increase of 200,000 Macs sold, and at the end of July 2006 it announced it had sold 1.3 million Macs in the quarter. For the fiscal year ending September 2006, Apple’s sales rose 39%.
Advertising was not the only reason. Apple’s switch to Intel processors in 2006 made Macs faster and able to run Windows, which reduced the risk of switching. But the ads gave people a simple story for why to try one.
The criticism, and the comeback
Not everyone was charmed. In Slate, critic Seth Stevenson called the campaign “mean spirited” and questioned whether “smug superiority” was a good look for a brand. In the U.K., Apple remade the ads with comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb; writing in The Guardian, Charlie Brooker argued the casting backfired, since audiences knew Webb for playing a self-regarding poseur.
Microsoft eventually hit back. In late 2008 it launched “I’m a PC,” a campaign built around real people, starting with a Microsoft employee who looked like Hodgman, proudly identifying themselves as PCs. It was one of the rare times a market leader openly answered a smaller rival’s ads.
Legacy
Apple officially ended “Get a Mac” in May 2010. The pairing proved durable anyway: in March 2021, Intel hired Justin Long for its own ads promoting Windows PCs over Macs, and in 2026 Long and Hodgman reunited for a pharmaceutical campaign built on the same format.
“Get a Mac” remains a model for comparison advertising: attack the rival’s product, not its customers, and make the audience like both characters enough to keep watching.