Iconic Apple ads

Exploring how we were won over with advertising.

1

Think Different

Comparing Apple to figures like Picasso and Amelia Earhart, this bold 1997 campaign was initially dismissed by Steve Jobs as “ad agency crap”. But the line, “To the crazy ones” wrote a poetic check for icon status that he went on to cash.

2

Snail

TV ads are meant to be fast and powerful. So are processor chips. The first 14 seconds of Apple’s 1998 Power Mac G3 commercial wordlessly showed a snail lugging Intel’s rival Pentium II across the screen. We’d say that’s the point made.

3

1984 Jobs and CEO

John Sculley had to fight Apple’s board to run the iconic advert that launched the Macintosh, but — directed by Ridley Scott and comparing PC maker IBM to Orwell’s Big Brother — it instantly defined the Mac as a mould–breaker.

4

I’m a Mac

Portrayed in the US by humorist John Hodgman and Die Hard 4’s Justin Long, and in the UK by Peep Show comedy duo Mitchell and Webb, the hapless ‘PC’ was outwitted by the sensible ‘Mac’ in TV and online spots from 2006 to 2009, boosting Mac sales worldwide.

5

iPod silhouettes

Like Kevin Costner’s cringey 1983 ad for the Apple Lisa, the first iPod ads were basic TV schmaltz. Chiat\Day’s simple visual idea of dancers in silhouette with white iPod cables explained nothing, but instantly sold the idea of cool.

6

Switchers

Unusually for Apple, this 2002 campaign featured real users. It couldn’t save a lackluster Mac line–up, but low–energy Windows–hater Ellen Feiss — “And I was like, unnhh?” — became an early internet–famous millennial.