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Why Apple's iconic Super Bowl ad still resonates 4 decades later
Yahoo ^ | February 10, 2024 | Dylan Croll

Posted on 02/11/2024 4:38:02 AM PST by C19fan

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Super Bowl 2024: The big business behind the big gameScroll back up to restore default view. Dylan Croll Dylan Croll·Markets Reporter Sat, February 10, 2024 at 10:10 AM EST·7 min read In this article:

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Once upon a time, believe it or not, no one particularly looked forward to Super Bowl ads.

That all changed when Washington faced Los Angeles on Jan. 22, 1984, in Tampa, Fla. Those who tuned in to the big game on CBS — and hadn’t fled to the kitchen for snacks — may have been intrigued by something completely different.

In between ads for Gillette Foamy Gel and Northwestern Mutual insurance, a dystopian scene appeared on their TV sets: A line of men wearing faded gray apparel marched mindlessly into a theater, where a bespectacled face, “Big Brother,” addressed them on a massive screen.

(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: Computers/Internet; Society; Sports; TV/Movies
KEYWORDS: 1984; apple; ibm; superbowl
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To: Psalm 73
It took less than 10 seconds:

Anya Major

21 posted on 02/11/2024 7:59:49 AM PST by Don W (When blacks riot, neighborhoods and cities burn. When whites riot, nations and continents burn)
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To: C19fan
Big Brother was actually Apple. IBM let Microsoft sell their software to any other computer manufacturer. Microsoft had a more open operating system and let anyone write apps for it while Apple kept development in house.

Apple lost out to Microsoft and struggled for some time. Microsoft started struggling when they tried to monopolize the browser, i.e. when they started acting like the Big Brother that Apple was.

22 posted on 02/11/2024 8:34:19 AM PST by who_would_fardels_bear (What is left around which to circle the wagons?)
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To: nwrep

That was intentional.


23 posted on 02/11/2024 9:49:35 AM PST by exnavy
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To: CIB-173RDABN
The very thing their ad says they were fighting they helped create. Irony.

Too true. Those megacomputers didn't go away. They are keeping better track of us than ever because of our home and work computers and our phones. Not to mention the role Apple has played in building up the Chinese dictatorship.

24 posted on 02/11/2024 9:59:32 AM PST by x
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To: discostu

And yet, everybody who saw the ad remembers the ad, as do a lot of people who weren’t even born when it was made. It gave Apple a corporate image and it moved product out the door. While some ads were pointless, this one wasn’t.


25 posted on 02/11/2024 10:01:53 AM PST by x
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To: discostu
It resonates but in all the wrong ways. It birthed the whole “let’s spend a whole bunch of money making an iconic micro-movie that actually doesn’t tell anybody anything about the product, and in fact barely even names it, cause Super Bowl.”

Yet, in the end and due to media coverage, everyone knew Apple was the source and the product being advertised. At the end of the day, I call that an advertising win.

26 posted on 02/11/2024 10:04:17 AM PST by Lazamataz (Laz 2005: "First, we beat the Soviet Union. Then we became them.")
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To: x

Well do we remember it or are we reminded of it every single year as part of the lead up to the SB? Sure it was a sea changing ad, but was it actually a good ad? Did it actually sell computers? And would anybody care about it if we didn’t have the annual “SB commercials history” article? How many of the ads that have tried to follow that path does anybody remember? How many of them actually caused sales of what they were advertising?


27 posted on 02/11/2024 10:08:54 AM PST by discostu (like a dog being shown a card trick)
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To: C19fan
` IBM as Big Brother was the wrong target. It should have been Bill Gates. For me, the best Super Bowl ad evah.

But what can you run on a Apple? What free software but theirs?

28 posted on 02/11/2024 10:15:39 AM PST by daniel1212 (Turn 2 the Lord Jesus who saves damned+destitute sinners on His acct, believe, b baptized+follow HIM)
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To: C19fan

I remember everybody panning that ad as being pretentious and not really directed at selling Apple computers - which truthfully, it didn’t.


29 posted on 02/11/2024 10:46:01 AM PST by FLT-bird
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To: dayglored

nobody ever lost their job buying IBM
IBM screwup their OS/2 OS didnt sell it well. but it’s still alive..


30 posted on 02/11/2024 3:35:17 PM PST by markman46 (engage brain before using keyboard!!!)
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