Apple Dumps Creator of Its Splashy Ads
Apple Computer, which has been overhauling an irreverent and impertinent corporate personality, said Tuesday that it has shed the advertising agency that helped create its controversial public image.
Chiat/Day, the Los Angeles-based firm that has been to traditional advertising what upstart Apple was to the computer industry, lost out in a horse race with BBDO (Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne) to become Apple’s sole agency.
BBDO, which since 1981 has handled most of Apple’s international advertising, will now have the U.S. business as well--an account estimated at $50 million annually.
It was Chiat/Day that masterminded the “big event” ads that propelled Apple to national attention, beginning with the “1984” commercial telecast during the 1984 Super Bowl. Apple has claimed the ad generated $3.5 million in Macintosh sales the day the computer was introduced.
The commercial showed a young woman evading police, bursting into an auditorium and hurling a sledgehammer through a giant TV screen that set off an explosion. The ad then suggested that the arrival of Macintosh meant that “1984 won’t be like 1984.”
The agency also was responsible for the even more controversial ad titled “Lemmings,” which showed scores of look-alike businessmen and women monotonously following each other off a steep cliff--a none-too-subtle reference to the popularity of IBM personal computers in business.
Ad Offended Some
That ad was shown during the 1985 Super Bowl despite doubts within Apple about whether to air it. Afterward, analysts said the ad offended the very customers Apple was trying to woo. It was the last time Apple cloaked itself in the David vs. Goliath image.
Since then, Apple has undergone a radical change, including the departure of Steven P. Jobs, the company’s visionary and quirky co-founder and chairman.
Apple, whose extensive television campaign drove its ad budget up to an estimated $100 million in 1984, has forsaken the use of annual advertising extravaganzas and instead has concentrated more on print advertising to market its Macintosh products as a desktop publishing system.
Don Mitchum, president of BBDO/West, said his agency will pay more attention “to how Apple goes to market with new and innovative products.”
Mitchum indicated that the path to market could be smoothed by taking a more “retail oriented” approach that relied less on splashy advertising and more on strengthening promotion and marketing with retailers.
Chiat/Day officials were not available for comment.
