Stephen explains the teaser campaign, the glamour techniques, and the current conversation’s tie-ins that sold 72,000 Macintoshes in only 100 days back in 1984.
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector and storyteller. I’m Steven’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those.
[Peak PTT Ad]
Dave Young:
Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here, along with Stephen Semple, and Stephen, as we normally do here, just before we hit the record button, you whispered the topic into my ear and I’m like, “Okay, so we’re finally getting to that one are we?” It’s a podcast about business building and marketing and we’re finally going to talk about the 1984 Apple ad. The other marketers that listen to this will understand this is there something that hasn’t been discussed about that ad yet?
Stephen Semple:
Well, I’m hoping. I’m hoping we have a new little angle on it.
Dave Young:
I am so anxious to hear it.
Stephen Semple:
Well, you know what’s really interesting, so when I was in university, I took marketing in university and it was about, I guess we would’ve been 1989 or something like that, my marketing professor, no, it would’ve been, I graduated in ’88 when I’m done, but so it be like ’87, my marketing professor started talking about that ad. And I made the comment that I had saw it because remember this was pre YouTube, you couldn’t go back. He was like, “You saw that ad” and I remember watching the Super Bowl and seeing it, but when you talk about recall, when I went back to do research on this, you know how people don’t recall things accurately, I would’ve swore on a stack of Bibles that it was a halftime ad.
Dave Young:
Oh, okay.
Stephen Semple:
And it was not. It was shown in a regular commercial break in the third quarter
Dave Young:
Okay.
Stephen Semple:
It was not like a Super Bowl ad. So yeah, we’re going to talk about this television commercial, which is full of visual elements and we’re on audio so this is going to be interesting. Yeah, if someone has not seen this commercial, I would recommend going to YouTube and just type in Apple Macintosh Super Bowl commercial and it’ll come up.
Dave Young:
Yeah, 1984.
Stephen Semple:
Yep. And give it a watch because it is considered, widely considered one of the most successful and impactful commercials of all time. It is really worth taking a look at, and that’s part of the reason why we’re going to study it.
Dave Young:
And I think something noteworthy about that is that it was considered that before the age of YouTube, and we talk about it in terms of the impact quotient of the ad being super high because nobody saw it more than once.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, and within 100 days Apple sold 72,000 Macintosh computers from a launch. And when we go back to 1984, 72,000 computers was a lot of computers to sell in a hundred days.
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
And it’s been awarded as being one amongst the greatest commercials of all time.
Dave Young:
Okay.
Stephen Semple:
And it was actually aired twice. It was aired in a few small test markets before the Super Bowl, then it was aired on the Super Bowl, but for all intents and purposes it was aired once and it wasn’t at half time. Most people recall it as halftime, but it was during a regular commercial break. And the other thing we have to remember is at the time Super Bowl ads were not this big thing that they are today.
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
This was really the first high priced, high production Super Bowl ad that had been done. So that was also very groundbreaking and it was made by Ridley Scott who today we all know is a very famous Hollywood producer. Ridley Scott got his start in doing television commercials. You remember the Chanel No 5 ones where the guy, the black and whites, where the guy dove in the pool and there was-
Dave Young:
Oh, sure.
Stephen Semple:
That was Ridley Scott did those as well.
Dave Young:
Okay.
Stephen Semple:
So he had some glamorous background in television ads before doing the Apple commercial.
Dave Young:
So where are we going with this?
Stephen Semple:
Well really part of it is, there’s a couple of things that I think has not been talked about when it comes to the Super Bowl ad. And these are things that we can all use in our ads no matter how small the campaign is, whether it’s magazine, whether it’s radio. And in the past we’ve talked about a very famous marketer, David Ogilvy, who’s just this master. And David Ogilvy would often talk about tapping into the conversation that is happening around the water cooler. Now what he meant about that is it’s not about speaking to it directly, it’s about inserting yourself into the conversation. So a great example would be when COVID hit and everybody’s like due to COVID, it’s leave out the due to COVID. COVID’s the conversation. We know it’s the conversation. You don’t have to use the word COVID to tap yourself into that conversation.
Stephen Semple:
Because when you do that, when you hit it right on the nose, everyone knows it’s an ad. You need to do it silently, you need to do it with stealth. There’s this saying that a technique known is a technique blown, so you got to kind of sneak into it.
Stephen Semple:
And so here’s some extra context that I think made the 1984 commercial powerful. First of all, it was 1984 and there was lots of conversation about Orwell’s book 1984 and the prediction it was making about this dystopian future with Big Brother. Now that’s kind of a bit of an obvious one. It was 1984 and we’re going to refer to 1984. But the interesting thing, and I’ll share the clip, they don’t reveal the tie in to 1984 until the very end. And then they even do that with some mystery. But here’s the other thing is Cold War was in full flight, this was really peak of it. Ronald Reagan was President, it was an Olympic year and the Summer Olympics were happening in LA and the USSR was boycotting it. So there was lots of conversation around Summer Olympics, right? So they use this intrigue, mindless people walking and speaker in front, when I say speaker, like human being. 1984 feel but it didn’t say anything about the 1984 tie in until the very end.
Stephen Semple:
No Apple logo, no talk of computers, complete mystery. And then there’s this little splash of color, a woman in red and white is running. It had almost that Olympic feel. That also added to the mystery that was, so there’s two big conversations time, 1984, the Olympics.
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
They secretly tied into both of those things. Turns out that woman was Anya Major, an athlete. She actually had to throw a sledge hammer, like that thing of her spinning and throwing a sledge hammer-
Dave Young:
Yeah, the big hammer throw thing.
Stephen Semple:
That throw was real. They had a real athlete. And so there was all this mystery and subtle ties into the conversation and the psyche of the day. And I believe that that was a big part of why that commercial had such impact. It really hit a cord. And then the ad leaves a partial review. They didn’t close the loop. And this is what’s called a teaser campaign. And teaser campaigns are really hard for advertisers to do because a teaser campaign is not about this ad. You’re buying future time and attention in a major way. So what I’m going to share with you right now is I’m going to share with you just the audio clip that comes at the end of that ad. And this is basically just as much of a reveal as they did. Give a listen to this.
Speaker 5:
On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh and you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.
Stephen Semple:
So Dave, when your hear that audio, the interesting thing it’s why 1984 is not going to be 1984. And we’re going to talk about why that statement is so powerful. But basically that Apple will revealing the Macintosh.
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
We had no idea what it was.
Dave Young:
None at all. And so 1984, I was still in university, at college, as we say here in the United States. And nobody had computers. Nobody had computers. I remember in ’85 a friend getting a Macintosh and just being blown away by it, where I was like, “Oh my gosh. Wow. Wow.”
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, they were way ahead of their day, man.
Dave Young:
I was even working in summer of ’84, I guess, so it would’ve been just after this ad came out. I was working for IBM, I was doing a college internship and nobody at the IBM factory in Boulder, Colorado even had a PC yet.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah.
Dave Young:
Because there might have been one or two in the entire facility. Computers were not ubiquitous. And of course nobody had a cell phone or anything like that. I think when you put it in the context of what the world was like in 1984, as you mentioned Cold War, we think we’re living the 1984 novel, turns out that wasn’t going to happen for another 40 years, reference to current political situation. But to do a teaser, to spend the money for a Super Bowl ad, and even back then, I mean it was still a Superbowl ad, you still paid a lot more because the reach was so high.
Stephen Semple:
It was still super expensive and that you’re going to run once.
Dave Young:
Yeah once, it’s just a tease and it lacked any kind of product information. It was basically keep an eye on this company because then they just showed at the very end is the Apple logo.
Stephen Semple:
That’s all they showed. That’s all they showed was the Apple logo. The whole ad was a tease because you didn’t know what the ad was about, it had all this 1984, but it was tying into the conversation at the time so you were intrigued. And at the end it said, gave this message and the Apple logo and didn’t say what it is. And I love teaser ads. I’ve done a ton of teaser ads in my career, but very selectively, because here’s the hard thing. They’re hard to get approved.
Stephen Semple:
The people writing the checks for the ads and focus groups in particular hate them. There’s clips on YouTube for the focus groups of this ad. And the focus groups hated it. They didn’t get it. They’re like, “I don’t understand it. This is stupid.” And my favorite was some of the suggestions focus groups make to improve the ad. You should put the Apple logo up right at the beginning that will hold people’s attention. No, people’s attention was being held. They would’ve tuned out if they knew it was an Apple ad. What held them was, what is this about? And that they should have drones doing dancing moves and make it more entertaining and use real people and bright colors. Bright colors would be good. And everyone loves dogs and chips. They should somehow fit it. This is real feedback from the focus group that hated it.
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
The board of directors at Apple hated it and Jobs ran it anyway. Jobs said, “Screw all you guys.” And went on to become one of the best performing commercials of all time. So much so, so there’s another thing that I want to talk about in terms of this ad that people I don’t think address, so much so that the follow up ad was an anticipated event for the next Super Bowl.
Stephen Semple:
More on that in a moment.
Dave Young:
Stay tuned. We’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business right after this.
[Empire Builders Ad]
Dave Young:
Let’s pick up our story of where we left off. And trust me, you haven’t missed a thing.
Stephen Semple:
We’re tying into the conversation that’s happening and that’s one of the things that really created that emotional hook. But the other thing that this ad did was a promise of transformation. Why 1984 will not be 1984 was hope. And one of this is so important, especially when you’re selling upscale products and services.
Stephen Semple:
Apple did this again in terms of teasing with the iPhone launch. So when they launched the iPhone, they had a whole campaign that was just, “Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello.” And at the end the Apple logo, right?
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
But the next year Jobs is gone and Sculley who ran Pepsi is now in charge. And you’ve got this anticipated Apple ad, right? The Apple follow up, which this time is in prime time plus aired at the halftime show in the Louisiana Super Dome, okay?
Dave Young:
Um hmm.
Stephen Semple:
And it flops. You could hear a pin drop after this ad runs. And folks, you can go look it up, it’s called the Apple Lemming commercial. And what you’ll see, it’s filmed in the same style, has the same mystery elements, same narrator, but two differences. One, no mystery, you know it’s an Apple commercial. Mystery’s gone.
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
You know it’s an Apple commercial, right? But second, no hope. There’s no hope in it. It’s all negative. There’s no hope, no transformation.
Dave Young:
It’s the one where all the dudes with briefcases are following each other over a cliff because they’re the Windows users.
Stephen Semple:
Yes.
Dave Young:
Right. Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Yes. Yeah. So what happened was Sculley who should have basically kept selling sugared water over Pepsi, because Apple almost went bankrupt under Sculley, right? He destroyed our company.
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
He did not understand what made the first ad magical. And this is what you need to understand and I have a special offer for people. Here’s the special offer, I’ll include the URL later, but they go to our website, they go to theempirebuilderspodcast.com website or businessgrowthguys.com website, you go to one of those websites and they can sign up for a how to sell upscale products and services 90 minute webinar. And this will be one on one with them. And we will teach them how to use mystery, hope and transformation visually and through radio ads and web copy and homepages and all that other things to basically better sell their upscale services.
Stephen Semple:
And part of that is we’ll study Apple ads from six different products, seven commercials spanning 17 years. And what you’re going to see is their playbook and how you can use that in your advertising.
Stephen Semple:
And so the lesson for today is tie into the conversation of the day if you can, offer hope and transformation and again, don’t tell it, make people feel it. And you know what the other thing is? Take us up on this offer. This is going to be a one on one with me and people have paid big bucks for this training and you’ll get it for free. I have only one ask, you like the podcast and you take us up on this session, please do a five star review for us. That’s it. And you’ll get this, we’ll do this session with you. And every client that I’ve had go through this have found it amazing and have not looked at advertising the same way again.
Dave Young:
I think that’s a great offer. And we don’t do a lot of offers on this podcast.
Stephen Semple:
No, this is the first one.
Dave Young:
Yeah, I mean this is over a year and was like, “Oh, you’re finally going to offer somebody something.” I’m familiar with the material, it is, it’s eyeopening and mind blowing. And part of my role as a Vice Chancellor at Wizard Academy, I sit through a lot of writing classes where people come and learn to write and they’re trying to write better ads. And there’s this desire, there’s this almost this need to do what Sculley did and just write something that is so, I don’t know the right word, Stephen, but like expository. So you just have this need to talk about the product, to talk about the service, and to talk about the things that the customers not even thinking about.
Dave Young:
And you lose their attention when you lead with those kinds of things because whatever it is you sell or do, is not nearly as important as what I’m doing right now in the middle of my day, getting through traffic, feeding the kids, doing the things that I’m doing. I don’t care about your product or your service, entertain me. Intrigue me somehow, right? And it’s just like the movies that we love, don’t set the stage at the beginning of the movie, right? They start right in on something that you go, “Oh, what is this about?” And now you’re kind of intrigued because you want to know more.
Stephen Semple:
It’s tough to do. So we have a campaign going on in Charlotte, North Carolina for heating and air conditioning company where the opening, and we decide we’re doing a teaser campaign at the beginning of this, which is tough, guy spending a lot of money. It’s got a big media buy. And the first ad we ran starts with the line, “Hi, I’m Travis Crawford and I fired my best friend.” And it goes on to talk about how it was best thing he did and they’re still friends and all this other stuff. And we never let the listeners know what he does. But guess what? He got tons of telephone calls on it. There was on radio, on a talk radio station during conversations about the NBA draft, the two DJs got talking about the commercial in terms of what they thought about it. And then they invited him on to do an interview all because of the mystery.
Dave Young:
Yeah, you leave people wanting to know more.
Stephen Semple:
Right. But what’s the number one complaint we got? And the radio station got? Radio station got tons of calls where people were complaining saying, “I’m in marketing. And that’s a really bad ad because you didn’t have an offer and you didn’t say what the company was.” But what did we buy? What we’re buying-
Dave Young:
Is future attention.
Stephen Semple:
Right, especially when we started these campaigns after the heating and air conditioning season. So we’ve missed the peak, we’re setting ourselves up for the fall.
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Creating all this intrigue and then when we reveal it’s going to be like, “Oh my God, this is what it is.” Right? But they’re hard. They’re really, really hard to do. They’re really hard to do.
Dave Young:
They’re hard to do. And like you said, they’re hard to get buy in from a business owner on, “Hey, we’re not even going to talk about you for a month or two.”
Stephen Semple:
Right. Now when we do how to sell upscale product services, mystery’s not the only thing we talk about. Hope and transformation are really big ones, easy to use things along that lines. But it’s really cool because you’ll see so clearly, so clearly what companies like Apple and others and customers of our own have done so successfully and you’ll actually really be able to distill them. And you know what? You just won’t look at advertising the same way again.
Dave Young:
Very cool, Stephen. Well, here I sit surprised because I wasn’t sure there was anything else that could be said about the 1984 Apple commercial.
Stephen Semple:
I can sleep tonight.
Dave Young:
Mission accomplished my friend.
Stephen Semple:
All right, thank you.
Dave Young:
Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and leave us a big fat juicy five star rating and review. And if you have any questions about this or any other podcast episode, email to questions at theempirebuilderspodcast.com.
