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Jobs’ 1984 Mac vision lured English filmmaker to American advertising

Apple's "1984" commercial was controversial when it came out, and not just to …

Jobs' 1984 Mac vision lured English filmmaker to American advertising
1984 ad composition by Aurich Lawson

Somebody was going to be fired for this. No way would Apple get away with marketing its new computer so boldly, in some TV ad depicting society as a cast of drones paralyzed by the preachings of a sinister, Big Brother figure.

For 28-year-old Steve Jobs, who resigned last month from the company he cofounded in 1976, the ambitious Orwellian commercial represented his first splash as Apple’s Macintosh division leader.

It was 1984, and world was about to hear from the next savior of home technology and consumerism. The new desktop, personified in the Macintosh commercial by a sledgehammer-wielding Olympian, marked the latest creation in the personal computer legacy, following the Apple II and IBM PC. And it was Jobs’s vision to outdo his competition during the third quarter of the Super Bowl.

Apple’s board of directors hated it. Following its December 1983 screening, certain members threatened to can the ad agency behind the concept, ChiatDay.

It was the second threat to Steve Hayden’s career in a matter of months. When his agency’s client refused to sign an estimate for another day of shooting over the summer, ChiatDay’s new senior vice president approved the expenditure anyway.

“I said, if this doesn’t work I’ll be looking for a job anyway, so what the hell,” Hayden remembered. Just like that, his credibility was once again in question before the board.

Had it not been for Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak’s faith in the project, "1984" would have likely never made air.

“The philosophy of the commercial really came out of Jobs himself,” Hayden told Ars. “And we thought, ‘Why don't we contrast this dystopian view of 1984 with something that would be liberating and freeing, i.e., smash the dictator?’"

The ad culminates with the athlete launching her sledgehammer, discus-style, into the big screen’s taunting face. Blinding light explodes as the ad’s benediction carries the foreshadowing tagline, “You’ll see why 1984 won't be like '1984.’” Hayden unearthed this line from a rejected print ad in San Francisco just prior to production at London’s Shepperton Studios.

To bring ChiatDay’s Macintosh storyboard to life, the agency hired New York-based Fairbanks Films, whose co-founder and marketing director found himself caught up in his own audition while attempting to lure the English director of ‘Blade Runner’ to the project.

“In order to bring Ridley and Tony Scott to America, I had to go through a personal approval process,” Phillip Elton Collins recalled. “I can remember sitting with them at dinner with their mother in London at the Ambassador Hotel, and having mom check me out.”

Collins made an impression; that dinner meeting represented Ridley Scott’s foray into American advertising with ChiatDay.

“They wanted to really break through the clutter of American commercials,” Collins added. “No one was really trying to startle people to pay attention to something, and I think that was their intention. And they achieved it.”

The fact that some 200 actors (many actual skinheads) were recruited for the production only emphasized the ad’s ominous look and tone. Perhaps more provocative than the apocalyptic visuals was the dark dialogue. Scott demanded those auditioning for the role of Big Brother read something from a script. Hayden worked up a speech in the vein of Mussolini and Mao, and faxed it over to Scott in London within 30 minutes. The director was so pleased with the part it became the dictator's soliloquy.

Though the minute-long ad ran only once (on January 22), a 30-second version aired on televisions throughout the Top 10 US markets—including Boca Raton, Florida, home to IBM’s PC headquarters.

Two days after the Super Bowl, Jobs unveiled the Macintosh at Apple’s annual shareholders meeting—to a five-minute standing ovation. At a time when IBM outsold Apple in desktops, Hayden remembers how Jobs delighted in the parallel he saw between his competitor and Big Brother from the ad.

"That wasn't what we were thinking,” Hayden insisted. “We were thinking of computers being a province of big government and big business only, and now here's something that individuals can use in far more creative ways."

Nobody was ever fired for the "1984" Macintosh spot. Apple’s board, however—somewhat ironically—axed Jobs the next year, following reports of backroom bickering and sluggish PC sales.

"'Stop the world in its tracks' was literally the direction he gave us," Hayden recalled of working with Jobs. "I do think his influence will remain, and as long as he draws breath he's going to have input on all new Apple products. He may not be able to do his day job, but his spirit certainly is not leaving the building."

Listing image by 1984 ad composition by Aurich Lawson

Channel Ars Technica