Running head: AD ANALYSIS 1

Ad Analysis: “1984 Apple’s Macintosh Super Bowl Commercial”

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In January 1984, Apple Inc. aired the Ad during the Super Bowl championship match,

with the intention of launching the Apple Macintosh PC in the market. At the time, the computer

industry was dominated by the IBM PC’s and other compatible clones in the industry (Berger,

2017). To put this into perspective, the first IBM PC was released in late 1981, three years

earlier. It’s called the “1984” ad because it’s based on the idea of the book “1984” by George

Orwell (Berger, 2017). The book takes place in a dystopian 1984 where citizens are constantly

monitored. Ideas that go against the sanctioned government standards are literally crimes. At the

time the IBM PC was the standard in offices and in many homes as well. The idea was to

“break” from the thinking that a PC was the only way to do work, and the Apple Macintosh

would allow people to do more while not being locked into standard thinking (Allan & Tryce,

2016).

According to O’Regan (2018), IBMs ad featured a Charlie Chaplin impersonator, and

Miller lite just ran its usual ad with John madden on a train - pretty typical so you can chalk up

one more thing that Apple did not invent but they set s new path, which articulates that super

bowl has the ability of developing an effective platform to go balls out while launching a

massive marketing campaign. On the contrary, others had spent as much as $1 million to produce
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a series of ads, no one had spent it all on one ad and essentially aired it once nationally (Allan &

Tryce, 2016). Compare it to the IBM Charlie Chaplin ad or Atari had Alan Alda on s living room

set talking about their PC then. This new ad starts in a bizarre gray room with s giant 109 foot

head talking to gray drones, a woman you cannot take your eyes off of dressed in red shirts and a

tank carrying s hammer runs through a dystopian world of more drones chased by Jack boot

thugs (Allan & Tryce, 2016). She throws the hammer shattering the screen not only is 1984 not

like Orwell’s 1984 but like the drones sitting there with wide gapes, it opens the eyes of a million

marketing and advertising geeks who realize 1985’s super bowl will never be like the 18

preceding the screen.

The ad builds awareness for a product that is much appreciated. All their adverts do is try

to convince people into buying a good product. It shows those who already use Apple products

why they should upgrade and it shows those that are non-Apple consumers what they are missing

(McAllister & Galindo-Ramirez, 2017). As a result, the consumers who purchase Apple products

add value to Apple, because simply seeing somebody using an Apple product is advertising for

the company. Their products are unique in design and aesthetically pleasing (McAllister &

Galindo-Ramirez, 2017). Apple products already hold a big percentage of tech consumers.

Therefore their brand is known by everyone and their products are always high quality. Since it

was 1984, the year itself became a character important to the commercial. It presented a perfect

opportunity to parody George Orwell’s “1984”, a dystopian novel about conformity, loss of spirit

and authoritarian rule, in other words, a direct metaphor for IBM (McAllister & Galindo-

Ramirez, 2017). The strategy called for Apple’s ad agency to position IBM as a dystopian

demanding controller of the unimaginable dull world of men in green eyeshades working with
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nothing more than upgraded accounting machines, computers without style, and users without

imagination, spirit or a sense of fun and freedom (McAllister & Galindo-Ramirez, 2017).

In terms of production, timing, effect casting, and simplicity, the commercial ad was

ravishingly brilliant; making an excess selling of 70,000 Macs in during that year alone. The

company’s founder Steve Jobs, allocated the entire budget to air the commercial ad during the

Super Bowl match in the 1984 with an intention of making a statement with the introduction of

the Macintosh, a truly innovative personal computer like no other; a world beater (Berger, 2017).

Jobs had to fight the board and the traditional wisdom of mounting an ad campaign that showed

the computer and its features. Jobs thought differently and was able to convince his then partner,

Steve Wozniak, to go “all in” with the one-off Super Bowl spot. With another couple of pushes,

he was able to win the day as well with a highly skeptical board (McAllister & Galindo-Ramirez,

2017). The 1984 Super Bowl ad commercial introduced the Apple Macintosh PC to an audience

of 96 million viewers, exciting potential buyers and legitimizing the computer with its promise

of a different machine that could challenge IBM, then the authoritative voice of business and

personal computing.

The ad commercial starts with an industrial setting that is dystopic blue and grayish

tones, which suggestive of IBM, also known as Big Blue, portraying a series of forlorn

individuals of ambiguous gender walking through a tunnel in lockstep under the monitor of

telescreens. This in contrast to the sharp full-color shots of a young athletic woman track star

(McAllister & Galindo-Ramirez, 2017). The use of color draws attention to our heroine versus

the blue muted monotone of the marchers and background. By choosing a young woman, not a

normal choice for a male dominant tech commercial, we are immediately alerted to the fact that
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this ad is different in every way. Then there is the interesting juxtaposition of the long line of

similar uniformed gray men in contrast to the colorful, lively athletic young woman who is freely

running down the hall with of all things, a sledgehammer (Allan & Tryce, 2016). There is the

eerie soundtrack, the constant wail of a warning horn suggestive of danger and foreboding while

reinforcing the dystrophic tone of the piece.

As our heroine runs down the hall we hear the monotones of an older male, a man of

stature, the words not quite discernable but the infection and tone very much one of authority.

Orwell’s Big Brother, appearing on a large screen, the very definition of authority, control and

order, an ideal personification of IBM itself (McAllister & Galindo-Ramirez, 2017). Our athlete

is being chased by highly outfitted security guards, perhaps Orwell’s thought control police, all

dressed in dark uniforms and bristling with shields, riot gear, and enclosed in visors and helmets

disguising their humanity and giving the impression of robots or men without human empathy

(Berger, 2017). The runner now nears the screen and hurls the hammer right at the time Big

Brother makes the announcement, “we shall prevail!” the screen explodes in a flash of broken

pieces and smoke as the audience of blue-grey men are taken aback by the shock of the

unexpected and violence of the moment. Big Brother is decimated and there is no longer any

sight of their leader.

In summary, the ad commercial portrays an athletic woman on the run seemingly running

from security forces wearing helmets and carrying night sticks. Looking like a forced laborer, the

athletic woman running past bald shaven people while wearing dusty attires. The bald-shaved

people are watching and listening to the ideological Big Brothers’ speech on a large screen in

accordance to George Orwell’s concept of 1984. The company had intentions of relieving the

IBM’s humanity in suppressive conformity of PC (Berger, 2017). A controversial spot that was
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triggered by the football championship game, which was won by the Carlifornia LA Raiders

against their rivals Washington DC, the Redskins. As such, many TV stations aired the

controversy in the news and some even repeated the entire match. As a result, it was estimated

that the reaction of media to create and advertising effect is costly and expensive.

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References

Allan, D., & Tryce, S. A. (2016). Popular music in Super Bowl commercials 2005-

2014. International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship.

Berger, A. A. (2017). 1984—The Commercial. In Television in Society (pp. 29-40). Routledge.

McAllister, M. P., & Galindo-Ramirez, E. (2017). Fifty years of Super Bowl commercials,

thirty-two years of spectacular consumption. The International Journal of the History of

Sport, 34(1-2), 46-64.

O’Regan, G. (2018). Apple II and Macintosh Computers. In The Innovation in Computing

Companion (pp. 29-32). Springer, Cham.