June 14, 2007: Paul McCartney sings his new song “Dance Tonight” in an iPod + iTunes ad, the latest in a series of spots starring music industry legends.
The new animated ad signifies a thawing of the icy relationship between Apple and McCartney, whose original band The Beatles has been locked in a legal battle with Cupertino for decades.
June 9, 2002: Apple launches its “Switch” advertising campaign, featuring real people talking about their reasons for switching from PCs to Macs. Apple’s biggest marketing effort since the “Think Different” ad campaign a few years earlier, it turns 15-year-old high school student Ellen Feiss into an unlikely star.
She becomes a viral sensation after viewers suggest she was stoned during filming of her sleepy-eyed “Switch” spot about a homework-devouring PC.
May 27, 1986: An exiled Steve Jobs takes a shot at Apple after the company ditches Chiat/Day, the ad agency that created the iconic “1984” Macintosh ad.
In a full-page ad published in The Wall Street Journal, Jobs says the move to competing ad agency BBDO shows that “caretakers” rather than “builders” now run Apple. From his perspective, it confirms that Apple has lost its revolutionary spirit.
May 21, 2010: Apple quietly ends its long-running, award-winning “Get a Mac” marketing campaign.
Debuting in 2006, the ads starred actor Justin Long as the cool, youthful Mac. Comedian John Hodgman portrayed the stuffy, awkward PC. Alongside the “Think Different” and the iPod “Silhouette” campaigns, “Get a Mac” will become one of the most fondly remembered extended ad campaigns in Apple history.
April 18, 1996: Apple unveils a massive $15 million promotional tie-in for the Mission: Impossible movie starring Tom Cruise.
Designed to promote the PowerBook, which Cruise uses in the spy flick, the marketing campaign comes at a particularly bad time. With Apple attempting to climb back into the black after reporting its largest quarterly loss ever, the company is in the middle of trying to perform its very own impossible mission. And that’s just the start of the problems.
April 16, 2009: Apple hits back at Microsoft following an advertisement that criticizes Cupertino for failing to sell decent laptops for less than $1,000.
“A PC is no bargain when it doesn’t do what you want,” Apple’s Mac PR director Bill Evans tells Bloomberg. “The one thing that both Apple and Microsoft can agree on is that everyone thinks the Mac is cool. With its great designs and advanced software, nothing matches it at any price.”
A new video reveals the creative process behind Spike Jonze’s brilliant short film “Welcome Home,” which paints the HomePod as a miracle device.
Not just one of the best Apple ads in ages, it’s one of the best adverts anywhere. The HomePod commercial stars English singer FKA twigs as a city dweller whose drab apartment is transformed into a colorful wonderland by an Apple smart speaker.
Spike Jonze’s surreal new short film about the HomePod is likely to go down as one of the year’s best Apple ads.
The Oscar-winning director’s four-minute creation is unabashedly joyful, which is a feeling that sometimes can get lost in all the Apple minimalism. Check out Jonze’s playful and creative HomePod ad below.
January 20, 1985: Apple attempts to build on the triumph of the previous year’s “1984” Macintosh commercial with another Super Bowl ad.
Called “Lemmings,” the ad for a new business platform called The Macintosh Office depicts blindfolded executives marching to their doom. The widely reviled ad will go down in history as one of Apple’s biggest stinkers.
January 17, 1984: A week before its famous airing during Super Bowl XVIII, Apple’s iconic “1984” ad debuts as a trailer in movie theaters.
To hype its revolutionary new Macintosh computer, Apple buys several months of promotion from theatrical ad distributor ScreenVision. Cupertino’s sci-fi-tinged “1984” spot — which depicts a sledgehammer-wielding freedom fighter taking on a Big Brother figure supposed to represent IBM —
gets such a favorable audience reaction that some theater owners continue to roll the ad after Apple’s contract ends.
