Random Apple Memory Apple’s Orwellian 1984 ad.
Adam Banks remembers Apple’s revolutionary ad, which promised that 1984 wouldn’t be like “1984”
In the spring of 1983, Steve Jobs decided his pet project at Apple — the Macintosh — needed a big launch, and talked CEO John Sculley into funding a pitch from ad agency Chiat\Day for an epic ad themed on George Orwell’s 1984. British director Ridley Scott — fresh from Blade Runner — signed a $600,000 twopicture deal to produce spots for both the Macintosh and the Lisa; the latter was directed by Scott’s colleague Adrian Lyne (Flashdance, Fatal Attraction) and featured a young Kevin Costner (preUntouchables) as a yuppie Apple user.
The Macintosh spot was less literal: hiring a huge studio in Shepperton, near London, and dressing it with scrap jet engine parts, Scott conjured a dystopian scene in which model and athlete Anya Major hurled a hammer to shatter the screen from which Big Brother was addressing an oppressed proletariat (Scott recruited local skinheads as extras for the scene). It was meant to represent fear of technology, but when Jobs previewed the ad at a Hawaii sales meeting he suggested Big Brother was computer giant IBM.
The staff loved it, but Apple’s board, led by Mike Markkula, didn’t get it at all, and tried to force Chiat\Day to sell back the airtime they’d booked, for hundreds of thousands of dollars, during January’s Super Bowl. But it was too late, and the ad ran. Sculley committed millions more to a newspaper ad blitz explaining what the Macintosh actually was.
“I remember feeling this was a huge project for one airing,” film editor Pamela Power told me in 2014. A regular collaborator with Scott, she cut the one‑minute spot, shot on 35mm, using traditional analog equipment; the Mac would later help to revolutionize her job. Although it ran only once nationally, the ad had been aired on local stations to qualify for the 1983 ad awards season. It won numerous trophies, including Best Super Bowl Spot in 2007, and is widely rated the best TV ad of all time.