Apple's Greatest Ads: The First Thirty Five Years (PHOTOS)

Hours after Apple announced Steve Jobs’ death on Wednesday, fans clamored to Apple stores around the world to mourn one of America's all-time CEOs.

Hailed as a visionary, Jobs was known as much for his innovative products as for his ability to connect them to consumers. Apple fans would wait in anticipation for a new product and they were known to skip class and work to watch him unveil iPods, iPhones and iPads in his trademark black turtleneck and jeans.

But despite his marketing genius, Jobs was skeptical of typical ad campaigns. He introduced the company to consumers in the 1970s using ads that featured slogans like “A is for Apple” or photos a picture of a naked man holding an Apple computer. The ads evolved to campaigns in the 1980s that referenced acclaimed inventors like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison.

And despite being forced out of the company in 1985 and not returning for 11 years, his creativity continued to have a lasting effect on all things Apple.

Some of the most recognizable recent television ads also belong to Jobs’ Apple. During the first decade of this century Apple introduced ads for the iPod that featured silhouettes dancing to in front of colorful backgrounds and iPhone campaigns that showcased both the device’s features and the myriad of apps available.

Though many of the campaigns were wildly successful, Jobs told Playboy Magazine in 1985, that ad campaigns were only necessary because of competition.

“IBM's ads are everywhere,” he said in the interview. “But good PR educates people; that's all it is. You can't con people in this business. The products speak for themselves."

And Jobs’ passion for his products -- he threw out two iPhone prototypes before signing off on the product in 2007, according to The New York Times -- could often be enough to convince consumers that his devices were essential to the way they lived.

"It's really hard to design products by focus groups,” Jobs told Businessweek in a 1998 interview. “A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."

Here are some of Apple's top ad campaigns:

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Comments

[OldSurrender]

10:48 AM on 10/18/2011

I'm always awestruck at much copy ads as recently as the '80s have versus today. It seems like today's advertising has little advertising copy whatsoever. We're so busy and A.D.D'd out that we don't have time to read ads anymore. It seems like that's all you need in a print ad anymore.

[littlebrowngirl]

07:55 PM on 10/09/2011

The 1984 and think different ads were amazing.

[Spock]

03:08 PM on 10/08/2011

I'm not a Mac user. I've never owned anything by Apple. But that Think Different add was pretty good.

[Skeetshooter]

08:06 PM on 10/07/2011

Totalitarianism is already here. Our government is totally in the pocket of big business, from all of the GOP and most of the Democrats. Now there's a GOP led voter suppression movement on the state level, and what is that if not a reflection of totalitarianism? This is not Egypt, but we're starting to wake up to the reality that the despotism American capitalism supports overseas is not very different from the despotism it supports at home. Those who fear one world government need to look up the dictionary definition of fascism. It's already here. All hail the Koch brothers!

[Bolkonsky]

05:12 PM on 10/07/2011

Love that silhouette campaign.

Odd thing though - its key visual point - the white cord - begs the question: how much longer will we be tethered to it ?

(and, btw, how 'bout a 250g, 500g, 1T pod ??? )

[Duffy Sinclair]

04:28 PM on 10/07/2011

The conviction in Jobs' voice on his take of "Crazy Ones" is so authentic. I'm really surprised they went the Dreyfuss version, which isn't all that great and not near as good. More remarkable are the words of that ad, which read like a short eulogy of Steve Jobs.

[MochasMom]

01:14 PM on 10/08/2011

I was just thinking the same thing. It's a great ad, but it's so much more... poignant... heard in Steve Jobs' voice.

[marc in OR]

02:51 PM on 10/07/2011

I taught advertising and marketing for 20 years (starting in 1979) and the "1984" Super Bowl ad was by far the game changer for the entire computing industry. Officially, it ran exactly one time (halftime of the 1984 Super Bowl) and made the game the media event that it has become.

The ad was just one part of the introduction of Macintosh -- which included other ads (both print and broadcast), and an enormous public relation/publicity effort with front page stories in the 25 largest daily newspapers, front cover stories in Time, Newsweek, and US News, and lead stories on all 3 major TV News shows.

A faculty colleague of mine who was a computer geek was not impressed. Convinced that the product would be an expensive failure, he told me that Apple had committed itself to being a toy company and that the MAC was an overpriced toy. IBM & Microsoft would crush Apple, he said. Wonder what ever happened to that guy?

One month after that "1984" ad ran, I bought my first Mac; last week I bought my 8th mac -- a MacBook Pro complete with Lion.

[MochasMom]

01:16 PM on 10/08/2011

Great story, thanks for sharing!

[Fred Enfield]

01:27 PM on 10/07/2011

There was a commercial for Dell computers. It showed a Dell computer hopping back and forth over an iMac, which was just sitting still like a computer. The Dell ad people were no doubt proud of their skills with snappy special effects but I didn't see the advantage of making their product behave like a Slinky. Meanwhile, in a major violation of the prime directive, the competition's iMac spent as much time in front of the camera as the Dell.

[MoneyMan2000]

01:18 PM on 10/07/2011

The "Get a Mac" ads have always been my favorite. I have never seen "Crazy Ones" narrated by Steve, I liked it more than the Richard Dreyfuss narration. They should have aired Steve's narration.

Steve, thank you for the Gifts you gave us, may you now find Rest.

[taoshengye]

10:59 AM on 10/07/2011

jobs is on board

[PathofTotality]

10:35 AM on 10/07/2011

"1984" - This video does not exist

BOOOOOOO

Anyway, yes, 1984 was the best commercial followed by Crazy Ones narrerated by Richard Dreyfuss.....in my opinion.

[liberalcynic]

08:00 AM on 10/07/2011

Get over it people; he's dead, it's sad, but don't continue you never knew the man - a man who did so much to better and ruin this world.
http://infrequentrant.blogspot.com/2011/10/steve-jobs-top-bloke-after-death.html

[hemiram]

12:38 AM on 10/07/2011

I wasn't impressed at all by most of the ads above, but I've never been impressed with the "value" of Apple stuff anyway. So far, I've avoided buying anything they make, and even though I use a Mac occasionally at work, their appeal escapes me.

[boyruns]

11:02 PM on 10/06/2011

Today there is no tech company that looks more like the Big Brother from Apple’s 1984 commercial than Apple itself.

[boyruns]

10:15 PM on 10/06/2011

BARF.
some of those are sooo bad they make me wanna...well you know....vomit.