To celebrate the 20th birthday of the Macintosh, Forbes are running an online poll to find the best ever Apple commercial.
"Call it what you will: clever, ridiculous, brilliant, puffy, pretentious or ingenious. But when a new Apple ad debuts on TV, you have to watch it. You'll likely look forward to seeing it again. And chances are Apple has spent enough money to ensure you will see it again"
Besides the poll itself, Forbes also features a wander through some of Apple's finest advertising moments.
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Aaaaw, poor "Lemmings" gets 70-something of the least favorites votes. It's not that bad. 1984 is leading the pack still. My Favorite Apple ad is HAL from 99, but it's not listed in the poll. Pfft.
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PermalinkI think the poor showing for "Lemmings" is mainly because it's the least remembered. Tragic as it is for an old git like me, many of the people voting were probably still eating non-solids when it aired.
And that makes 1984's stong showing all the more impressive... I presume that a reasonable percentage of the people voting for that have only ever seen it in downloaded QuickTime form, or brief snippets of it in those 1980s retrospectives that have taken over TV recently.
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PermalinkI think part of the reason people vote 1984 up and Lemmings down (even if they were too young to see these ads when they aired) is because hundreds of articles and books over the years have crowned 1984 the best Apple ad and Lemmings the worst.
which makes them lemmings.. hehe.
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PermalinkHaha... fair point. But I think you'd be pretty hard pushed to claim that any of the other adverts in that selection are better than 1984 :P
That said, though, I do have a bit of a soft spot for "Think Different", mainly because, as a long suffering Mac user, it softly whispered that Jobs was back in charge and things were going to be alright. I'm not sure it would've persuaded anyone who wasn't already an Apple-head, though.
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PermalinkNothing but not packs the wallop that 1984 does. Even after all of these years, it's freaking amazing. Yeah, there's been good Apple work since but it's work that sneaks up with a bit of a whisper. And dare I say that any don't think any spot for any product since quite touches it.
Did anybody catch the all-time greatest commercials thing on VH1 a while back? 1984 was up there but not number one and I was profoundly disappointed. But I guess I can kinda sorta understand... probably not as many "normal" people remember it or can name it as readily as a spicy meatball or the luggage-bashing gorilla.
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PermalinkI first heard of 1984 from my brother, who claimed that when he was watching the superbowl, and the 1984 ad came one, it was also aired on eight major channels at the same exact time. So if you tried to 'escape' the 1984 ad with your remote control and headed towards any of the other
major channels, you'd still just see the ad.
Now thats one smart and creative media-buy. How creepy would that effect be?
I never did manage to get that story confirmed, and I didn't see 1984 myself until many years later in adschool. Finally I get to see the ad my brother was speaking so highly of. And yaknow what? It was better than I had imagined.
still HAL is my fave. ;)
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