Apple’s “Think Different” campaign did not begin at the August 1997 Macworld Expo. Contemporary coverage of Steve Jobs’s keynote records him discussing Apple’s neglected brand and saying that its buyers “think differently.” The finished advertising campaign was still to come. TidBITS reported that its television commercial first aired on September 28.
Jobs had returned to a company facing falling sales and doubts about its future. At Macworld he said Apple needed to pay more attention to its brand. Earlier that summer, he had invited TBWA\Chiat\Day, the agency behind Apple’s “1984” Macintosh ad, to compete for the account. The agency was then working against other firms rather than simply being handed the business.
The pitch that became the campaign
Rob Siltanen, a creative director at the agency who worked on the pitch, later described the ideas presented to Jobs. Art director Craig Tanimoto had paired black-and-white pictures of historical figures with the Apple logo and the words “Think Different.” The pitch included images of Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison and Mahatma Gandhi. It showed the kind of person Apple wanted to associate with its computers while leaving the computers themselves out of the pictures.
According to Siltanen, Tanimoto drew a contrast with IBM’s “Think IBM” advertising. Siltanen says Jobs initially worried that placing Apple’s logo beside celebrated figures would look arrogant, then agreed to pursue the idea. That account identifies the person who proposed the words and the portrait format; it does not attribute their creation to Jobs.
The agency developed the idea across print, outdoor and television. A contemporary TidBITS report describes billboards and bus-shelter ads as well as the TV launch. The common visual treatment gave the campaign a recognizable identity even when it did not display a product.
“Here’s to the crazy ones”
The “Crazy Ones” TV commercial put a spoken script over footage of well-known people. Siltanen says he wrote an early version after a proposed video set to a Seal song proved unsuitable for a shorter commercial. Jobs initially rejected his script. Other writers tried versions, and the team returned to Siltanen’s draft; Ken Segall revised it for the finished spot. Richard Dreyfuss voiced the version that aired.
The imagery made the ad recognizable without showing a Macintosh. Its subjects included Einstein and Amelia Earhart, both identified in contemporary coverage. Siltanen’s account also identifies Gandhi in the outdoor concepts. The contrast between those portraits and the small Apple logo carried the campaign’s message.
What the campaign could and could not do
The campaign gave Apple a way to tell buyers what it stood for while the company worked on its products. Siltanen credits it with bringing attention back to Apple. That is a participant’s assessment, not a measure that isolates the ads’ effect on sales. TidBITS observed at the time that a single campaign could not reverse the company’s fortunes by itself.
The launch sequence also matters. Jobs’s Macworld remarks showed his focus on Apple’s image, but they were not the public debut of Tanimoto’s slogan or the “Crazy Ones” commercial. Treating the keynote as the ad launch obscures the work that the agency did between the pitch and the September broadcast.
The original “Think Different” run continued beyond its launch year. Its lasting story includes the credited agency team, Jobs’s decision to approve the concept, and the gap between talking about a brand at Macworld and putting a finished campaign in front of the public.