Apple: “1984”
Ridley Scott's dystopian commercial that introduced the Apple Macintosh during the 1984 Super Bowl.
- Brand
- Apple
- Year
- 1984
- Agency
- Chiat/Day
- Category
- Tech
Rows of grey, shaven-headed workers sit in a vast hall, staring at a giant screen where a "Big Brother" figure lectures them. A young woman in bright red shorts runs in, chased by riot police, and throws a sledgehammer at the screen, which explodes. A voice then announces that on January 24th Apple will introduce Macintosh, "and you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984."
The ad was directed by Ridley Scott, fresh from Blade Runner, and created by the agency Chiat/Day. It ran nationally on American television only once, during Super Bowl XVIII in January 1984, yet it is still regularly named one of the greatest commercials of all time.
Famously, the computer never appears. The ad sells an idea instead of a product: that personal computers could free people rather than control them. That choice, and the cinematic scale of the production, is widely seen as the moment the Super Bowl became the biggest showcase for advertising in the world.
Watch the full ad on YouTube
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