1984. Precisely January 22. For some time now, the event that awards the title of world champion team in the NFL has been considered the most important event of the year. Catalyzing the attention of the whole world in front of the television set. Not a bad situation for a company seeking promotion for its product. Like Apple, which during the break in the third quarter of the meeting screened a promotional film of exactly one minute. Ready to make history.
The commercial encapsulated all this: in a dark and gloomy corporate apocalyptic setting, an army of men all the same march in synchronized rhythm. They are headed toward a large hall, in which an Orwellian Big Brother who has appeared on a screen tries to seduce them and control their minds. At the same time, a young athlete tries to enter the unhealthy place, escaping from the guards and managing to enter the large hall filled with men. Startled by the scene, she throws a hammer at the mega screen, destroying it and silencing Big Brother. After that, the final inscription then appears: "on January 24, 1984 Apple introduces Macintosh. And you will understand why 1984 will not be like 1984." This is the commercial with which Apple introduced the Macintosh personal computer, a commercial that has become a cult because of its inspiration from George Orwell and because it was directed by Ridley Scott, fresh off his dystopian and resounding "Blade Runner."
It was broadcast only once. Steve Jobs a few months earlier had shown it to a small audience of partners and shareholders. But the company's board of directors, led by Jonh Sculley, did not take the project very well. It was the founders Jobs and Wozniak who defended it, so much so that they offered to pay out of their own pockets for the space to air it. To make it clear how much they cared.
And, numbers in hand, it was a successful move. Because Apple sold about 72,000 in the 100 days after the advertisement was released.
The analysis of the commercial
The commercial was awarded "the best of the century." Dating back to when Apple was not yet a colossus, the image the brand wanted to convey was that of a small company and the lone innovator going up against the monolithic empire, that of IBM. But let's go and analyze it in detail. And the scheme for doing so is a simplistic derivation (provided by Italian storytelling expert Andrea Fontana) of the "hero's journey" structure:
- Someone: the athlete in question
- Must do something: run down a dark corridor in anger
- To achieve something else: to break the monotony of Orwellian Big Brother
- But there's a problem: the enemy is big and has control over the whole audience
- So you have to transform: take action and hit the screen with the hammer
- To rise to the occasion: defeat the enemy
- And overcome the situation: break the monotony
The format is one to seduce the viewer. 1984 is a clear reference to how Apple, in Jobs' idea, was to rise as the only minor force capable of countering the dominance of uniform technology dispensers. A reference to IBM, which, at that time, was imposing its Personal Computer in a strong way. But it is not only IBM in the crosshairs of that video: in fact there is every company that represents a centralization of power.
This short film revolutionized the world of advertising, to the point of becoming an indisputable benchmark. For the first time (through a commercial) not a product is directly proposed, but an idea. The new computer is not at the center of the story: this message is constructed through the interaction of heterogeneous contributions, suggestions and cues, the appeal to literature, the attentions to the condition of women, the opposition to any means of prevarication, the appeal to courage and freedom. This small masterpiece aimed to communicate to the audience to expand the boundaries of the IT universe and to make even the cramped working space a creative and stimulating world with new modes of expression.
Advertising is represented, therefore, as mirroring the spirit of the times, which is dominant, because, as the principles of post-1980s marketing teach, goods are best sold if lifestyles and behavioral patterns are conveyed with them. And Apple was one of the pioneering companies in this regard.
A language that was new for the time and so current and avant-garde, it has now become a must for any kind of company that wants to get into the hearts of its customers.
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Alessandro Colonna
Brand Ambassador Digital Innovation Days.