The Apple board hated Ridley Scott’s classic 1984 TV ad. The board decided that ad would be a disaster for Apple and wanted to kill and bury it. It’s all in Walter Issacson’s book.
I’m not at home and don’t have my copy of Isaacson handy, but I don’t remember that they really hated about it was that they didn’t want the Macintosh budget blown on the Super Bowl. I suggest you read “Memoirs Of A Mad Man” by the Account Director who worked at Chiat/Day on 1984, who goes into detail about the whole process. I have been working in advertising for about 45 years, and I worked with, and still am friends with, a Media Director who worked at Chiat/Day as a planner on Apple the time.
What mostly bothered the Board was mostly that they thought the money that was spent on Ridley Scott, hundreds of skinheads, an unknown actress and expensive production and post work would have been better spent on at least one big name star, which is what IBM and other computer companies were doing back then. They also didn’t think that trashing IBM, who was by far, the biggest, best selling and best known power in the computer business, was a smart idea.
The board ordered that Apple try to resell all the millions of dollars worth of spots they had ordered for the Superbowl. And Apple management complied and sold the spots. Probably at a loss.
What Apple’s Board, the agency’s media, account and creative people, along with everyone else, hated most was blowing almost all their minuscule broadcast budget on what was the one of the most expensive spots at that time, a 60 second first ad in the first pod of the Super Bowl. But they did NOT even plan to spend anything resembling millions of dollars on Super Bowl time, or even considered running many spots because the entire broadcast budget wasn’t that big. They had reserved just one other spot, a 30 second for Lisa.
NONE of the spots that aired on the Super Bowl in 1984 cost near a million $ to air. My media friend says they spent about $500,000 on production for the 1964 ad and about $650,000 for the 60 seconds of airtime for 1984, which was a ton of money for any ad in those days, even for the Super Bowl. CBS sold the 30 second spot for Lisa for more than then Apple agreed to pay for it. It was only in 1985, a year after the 1984 ad ran and created such spectacular sales results far exceeding anything Apple anticipated that CBS was able to sell a few 60 second spots for a million $.
They sold all but one spot. They couldn’t sell that one and had little choice but to run 1984.
They suspected this would happen when they ordered the spots, which was why they agreed to the $650k price.
The ad has probably been seen a few million times, and no amount of money could buy that level of publicity. TV stations were running the ad for free in their newscasts.
You got this one right. They also got a ton of coverage in newspapers, magazines and radio.
Probably it will go down in the history books as the greatest television ad of all time.
It is considered “the greatest ad of all time” by many industry
But in the real world it only ran on TV as a paid ad ONE time.
That’s an urban legend; 1984 had only 1 national TV run. They ran some 1984 spots in markets where IBM had big offices and big numbers, like NY Metro, where IBM’s headquarters were located, Miami, LA. Steve and Chiat/Day wanted to poke IBM in the eye with a very sharp stick. They also ran 1984 in local markets in Screenvision, then the just released, and first national cinema advertising network; one of my old bosses was the one who sold them the spots.
And that was one time too many for Apple’s board. Steve Jobs loved that ad.
They were very much more than thrilled with the results, and so were the stockholders and just about everybody except for anybody. Apple’s sales and stock prices went through the roof.
