1984 (advertisement)

Director Ridley Scott was hired to direct the 1984 commercial.

The commercial was created by the advertising agency Chiat/Day, of Venice, California, with copy by Steve Hayden,[14] art direction by Brent Thomas, and creative direction by Lee Clow.[15] The commercial "grew out of an abandoned print campaign" with a specific theme:[2]

"[T]here are monster computers lurking in big business and big government that know everything from what motels you've stayed at to how much money you have in the bank. But at Apple we're trying to balance the scales by giving individuals the kind of computer power once reserved for corporations."

Ridley Scott (whose dystopian sci-fi film Blade Runner had been released one and a half years prior) was hired by agency producer Richard O'Neill to direct it. Less than two months after the Super Bowl airing, The New York Times reported that Scott "filmed it in England for about $370,000";[2] In 2005 writer Ted Friedman said the commercial had a then-"unheard-of production budget of $900,000."[16] The actors who appeared in the commercial were paid $25 per day.[17] Scott later admitted that he accepted brutal budget constraints because he believed in the ad's concept, outlining how the total cost was less than $250,000 and that he used local skinheads to portray the broken, pale "drones" in the commercial.

Steve Jobs and John Sculley were so enthusiastic about the final product that they "...purchased one and a half minutes of ad time for the Super Bowl, annually the most-watched television program in America. In December 1983 they screened the commercial for the Apple Board of Directors. To Jobs' and Sculley's surprise, the entire board hated the commercial."[16][18][19] However, Sculley himself got "cold feet" and asked Chiat/Day to sell off the two commercial spots.[20]

Despite the board's dislike of the film, Steve Wozniak and others at Apple showed copies to friends, and he offered to pay for half of the spot personally if Jobs paid the other half.[19] This turned out to be unnecessary. Of the original ninety seconds booked, Chiat/Day resold thirty seconds to another advertiser, then claimed they could not sell the other 60 seconds, when in fact they did not even try.[21]

In his 1983 Apple keynote address, Steve Jobs read the following story before showcasing a preview of the commercial:[22]

"[...] It is now 1984. It appears IBM wants it all. Apple is perceived to be the only hope to offer IBM a run for its money. Dealers initially welcoming IBM with open arms now fear an IBM dominated and controlled future. They are increasingly turning back to Apple as the only force that can ensure their future freedom. IBM wants it all and is aiming its guns on its last obstacle to industry control: Apple. Will Big Blue dominate the entire computer industry? The entire information age? Was George Orwell right about 1984?"

In March 1984 Michael Tyler, a communications expert quoted by The New York Times, said "The Apple ad expresses a potential of small computers. This potential may not automatically flow from the company's product. But if enough people held a shared intent, grass-roots electronic bulletin boards (through which computer users share messages) might result in better balancing of political power."[2]

In 2004, Adelia Cellini writing for Macworld, summarized the message:[7]

"Let's see—an all-powerful entity blathering on about Unification of Thoughts to an army of soulless drones, only to be brought down by a plucky, Apple-esque underdog. So Big Brother, the villain from Apple's '1984' Mac ad, represented IBM, right? According to the ad's creators, that's not exactly the case. The original concept was to show the fight for the control of computer technology as a struggle of the few against the many, says TBWA/Chiat/Day's Lee Clow. Apple wanted the Mac to symbolize the idea of empowerment, with the ad showcasing the Mac as a tool for combating conformity and asserting originality. What better way to do that than have a striking blonde athlete take a sledgehammer to the face of that ultimate symbol of conformity, Big Brother?"

• 1984: Clio Awards
• 1984: 31st Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival—Grand Prix[23]
• 1995: Clio Awards—Hall of Fame
• 1995: Advertising Age—Greatest Commercial[11]
• 1999: TV Guide—Number One Greatest Commercial of All Time[24]
• 2003: WFA—Hall of Fame Award (Jubilee Golden Award)
• 2007: Best Super Bowl Spot (in the game's 40-year history)[25]

It ranked at number 38 in Channel 4's 2000 list of the "100 Greatest TV Ads".[26]

Ted Friedman, in his 2005 text, Electric Dreams: Computers in American Culture, notes the impact of the commercial:

Super Bowl viewers were overwhelmed by the startling ad. The ad garnered millions of dollars worth of free publicity, as news programs rebroadcast it that night. It was quickly hailed by many in the advertising industry as a masterwork. Advertising Age named it the 1980s Commercial of the Decade, and it continues to rank high on lists of the most influential commercials of all time [...] '1984' was never broadcast again, adding to its mystique.[16]

The "1984" ad became a signature representation of Apple computers. It was scripted as a thematic element in the 1999 docudrama, Pirates of Silicon Valley, which explores the rise of Apple and Microsoft (the film opens and closes with references to the commercial, including a re-enactment of the heroine running towards the screen of Big Brother and clips of the original commercial).[27]

The commercial was also prominent in the 20th anniversary celebration of the Macintosh in 2004, as Apple reposted a new version of the ad on its website and showed it during Jobs's Keynote Address at Macworld Expo in San Francisco, California. In this updated version, an iPod, complete with signature white earbuds, was digitally added to the heroine. Keynote Attendees were given a poster showing the heroine with an iPod as a commemorative gift.[28] And the ad has also been cited as the turning point for Super Bowl commercials, which had been important and popular before (especially with the Coca-Cola ad featuring Joe Greene from years earlier) but after "1984" those ads became the most expensive, creative and influential advertising set for all television coverage.

Revisiting the commercial in Harper's Magazine thirty years after it aired, social critic Rebecca Solnit suggested that "1984" did not so much herald a new era of liberation as a new era of oppression. In the December 2014 issue of the magazine, she wrote:

I want to yell at that liberatory young woman with her sledgehammer: "Don't do it!" Apple is not different. That industry is going to give rise to innumerable forms of triviality and misogyny, to the concentration of wealth and the dispersal of mental concentration. To suicidal, underpaid Chinese factory workers whose reality must be like that of the shuffling workers in the commercial. If you think a crowd of people staring at one screen is bad, wait until you have created a world in which billions of people stare at their own screens even while walking, driving, eating in the company of friends—all of them eternally elsewhere."[29]

Media archivist (and early Apple supporter) Marion Stokes recorded said Super Bowl featuring the legendary ad, which was also featured in the 2019 documentary film Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project.[30][31][32]

In March 2007, the advertisement attracted attention again when Hillary 1984, a video mashup of the original commercial with footage of Hillary Clinton used in place of Big Brother, went viral in the early stages of the campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. The video was produced in support of Barack Obama by Phil de Vellis, an employee of Blue State Digital, but was made without the knowledge of either Obama's campaign or his own employer. De Vellis stated that he made the video in one afternoon at home using a Mac and some software. Political commentators including Carla Marinucci and Arianna Huffington, as well as de Vellis himself, suggested that the video demonstrated the way technology had created new opportunities for individuals to make an impact on politics.[33][34][35]

In May 2010, Valve released a short video announcing the release of Half-Life 2 on OS X featuring a recreation of the original commercial, with the people replaced with City 17's citizens, Big Brother with a speech from Wallace Breen, the agents of the Thought Police with Combine Soldiers, and the nameless runner with Alyx Vance.[36]

On August 13, 2020, Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store after Epic Games introduced a direct payment option that circumvented Apple's 30% revenue cut policy, violating terms of service policies. In response, Epic filed a lawsuit against Apple, and created a parody of the "1984" ad called "Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite".[37][38] In the ad, Big Brother is replaced by a personification of the Apple logo (Tart Tycoon) addressing an audience of Fortnite's default outfits, with the character Brite Bomber acting as the heroine.