September 28, 1997: Apple debuts its iconic “Think Different” television commercial, aligning the troubled computer company with some of history’s most celebrated freethinking rebels.
The most famous tagline in Apple history, “Think Different” doesn’t just articulate how Cupertino differs from its competitors. It also highlights how Apple, under the leadership of CEO Steve Jobs, will forge a future far different from its floundering, money-losing days of the early 1990s.
August 12, 1981: The launch of the IBM Personal Computer ignites a long-running Apple-versus-PC rivalry.
Secure in the Apple II’s technical superiority over the new PC, Apple welcomes International Business Machines to the personal computing party in a full-page ad in the pages of The Wall Street Journal. Things won’t stay positive for long.
June 10, 1977: Apple Computer Inc. ships its first Apple II computer.
A hulking beige mammoth with 4KB of RAM (upgradeable to a whopping 48KB), the Apple II was the computer that defined Apple for a generation of fans. Retailing at $1,298, it cost the equivalent of a handful of MacBook Pros today — even though it seemed a total bargain at the time.
May 21, 2010: Apple quietly ends its 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 iPod “Silhouette” campaigns, “Get a Mac” will become one of the most fondly remembered extended advertising blitzes 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. Attempting to climb back into the black after reporting its largest quarterly loss ever, Apple is in the middle of trying to perform its very own impossible mission. And that’s just the start of the problems.
February 1, 2010: The tech-loving world goes into meltdown at the sight of comedian Stephen Colbert using a prerelease iPad to read nominations during the Grammy Awards show.
“Jay-Z, did you not get one of these in your gift bag?” Colbert quips from the stage. “Am I cooler than you?”
The celebrity sneak peek is all part of Apple’s big (and wildly successful) plan to hype its upcoming tablet.
Apple execs uttered the term “5G” so many times during Tuesday’s iPhone 12 unveiling that they could have triggered semantic satiation. (That’s when you hear something so many times that it starts to sound … really weird.)
If their repetition of the word didn’t burn 5G into your brain — or turn your gray matter into mush — the 5G supercuts that followed certainly will.
Question: How do you get billboards for a new product up as quickly as possible after launch, without spoiling Apple’s perfectly orchestrated unveiling? Answer: You put up the billboard, then add the product afterward.
If that sounds like way too much effort, we’re guessing you won’t be hearing back from Apple about your marketing job application anytime soon.
Excerpted from Live from Cupertino: How Apple Used Words, Music, and Performance to Build the World’s Best Sales Machine by Michael Hageloh and Tim Vandehey.
When I set out to write this book, one of my goals was to see if I could insult fifty million people in one sentence. Here goes. Years ago, before I was excommunicated from New York City and became a resident of Texas (a state so backward that someone in our town once asked my wife and me if being Jewish was like being Catholic), I lived in Florida, which is so appealing to the unbalanced that when I took the “Florida Challenge” (where you google “Florida man” and your birthday to see what kind of headlines pop up) for April 24, the first result read, “Florida man kisses venomous snake and is immediately bitten on the lips.”
Mission accomplished. Now, let’s move on.
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Cupertino’s marketing department unleashed a slew of fancy new Apple buzzwords to describe iPhone 11 features landing in stores later this month.
