Robert Cole (RobertKCole)
8 HN mentions · mentioned in 8 months, 2017–2023
1:04 · 5.2M views · Jun 26, 2010
The famous 1984 Apple Macintosh Super Bowl commercial, directed by Ridley Scott and based on Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. It casts the Mac as a force freeing individuals from a Big Brother figure, widely read as aimed at IBM.
Cited as the standard example of a hugely effective emotional ad that sold a brand image rather than product details.
8 comments from Hacker News
Your emotions are just another part of your body that you can control. It's an extremely important part of countless careers such as investment banker, fighter, lawyer, judge, doctor, clinical scientist or researcher, or even things such as an air traffic controller. It's not that the people in these fields do not have emotions, but that they consciously work to control them. I've achieved as much thanks to a career long in my past as well, and it changed me radically for the better. I think we are quick to discount things that we cannot visibly see. For instance, if somebody of normal health told you that it was just physically impossible for them to bench press more than 100 pounds, you'd probably find their statement quite ridiculous. Of course the reason is that we can see our muscles and how they change and develop (or atrophy) in response to how we train them, and we can precisely measure changes in our ability to lift. With emotions you cannot so easily measure them, and it's not really clear how to train them. But that certainly does not mean it's out of your control. --- But on point here, consider the notion of trying to prohibit emotionally manipulative advertisements. The first question would be why? Apple's 1984 [1] is one of the most famous and effective bits of marketing. It's also almost entirely an emotional piece. You're certainly not excited about the specs there! I don't see why such things should not be allowed. And if you're going to try to ban emotional
Literally in marketing 101 (okay, 301) one of the first things you learn is that marketing is not necessarily about directly selling things, but about brand recognition and subconsciously instilling it, and implied quality, in the consumers mind. For instance Coca Cola spends an obscene amount on advertising each and every year, even though they have no significant competition. A big part of that is because it creates an image in your mind the next time you go to buy something, that Coca Cola is higher quality more desirable than alternatives. So for instance for your AC unit, perhaps you see a Samsung and GE. Your decision between which to buy is the purpose of marketing and advertising. For instance this is also why companies don't really like running discounts. Discounts can produce immediate increases in sales, but they simultaneously can also subconsciously diminish the perceived quality of a product in the consumer mind. Places where discounts, across all brands, are ubiquitous and independent of the manufacturer are presumably a game changer here since it's not the product being discounted per se but the site itself running a discount. Apple's 1984 ad is still probably one of the most famous ads. Check it out [1]. It doesn't really make you think, "Yes I must go immediately buy a Macintosh." Literally no details are given about the product at all, and 90% of the commercial is a cinematic that has nothing to do with the product. Nonetheless it instills a image, and one
One of the fascinating things about '1984' is that in the actual year 1984 the book, which did receive some notable publicity that year, was perceived as being something of a 'dud'. Not that people perceived that they were living in surveillance-free society but rather at that time people were more preoccupied with nuclear war (anyone remember "The Day After"? [0]) and the tools that would bring about an oppressive environment were still in the imaginations of technologists. Strangely enough Apple, with its 1984 type commercial, was one of the few companies that really went all in on the 1984 anniversary [1]. [0] [LINK] [1] this video
>that people in 1985 were having the exact same discussions we are today about the computer and it's effect on privacy with respect to "big brother" and the totalitarian government's obsession with collecting information on people. Sure did, the 1970's and early 1980's were the birth time of the computer privacy movement. That's where the iconic Apple commercial has its background: this video Of course, today everyone is spending their time enjoying indoctrination in front of a miniature Apple screen instead of getting called into a center...
> It's the ancestor of "Mac vs PC". That's an odd turn of phrase considering that both the Mac and the PC predate the Amiga. If anything surely the Mac's Ridley Scott directed launch Super Bowl ad was the start of "Mac vs PC". People loved the Amiga because it had a lot of modern features for the time and was reasonably priced. You're definitely right, it's the little computer that could. The demo scene loved the Amiga because a lot of hardware features were left undocumented ready for you to discover and wow your friends with. this video