Apple, Y2K and The Super Bowl ...`1984' All Over Again?

On second read, maybe it will make a difference in general Y2K awareness. And counter-weight the additional government media spins planned. -- Diane

Published Wednesday, January 27, 1999, in the San Jose Mercury News

http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/front/docs/superads27.htm

`1984' All Over Again?

Apple making return to Super Bowl with Y2K spot

BY CHARLIE MCCOLLUM Mercury News Retail Writer

Fifteen years ago, Apple Computer changed the face of Super Bowl advertising with the first ``event'' ad, the compelling ``1984'' spot that many experts consider the single best TV commercial ever.

Now, after years away from the big game, Apple returns Sunday with a one-shot spot that already has stirred considerable buzz at this month's Macworld convention and online at the company's Web site. Featuring HAL, the computer from ``2001: A Space Odyssey,'' the commercial touts the Macintosh immunity to the Y2K bug and will run in one of the Super Bowl's prime ad slots: the first 60-second time spot after the opening kickoff.

The time will cost the company more than $3 million; the Fox TV network is getting an average of $1.6 million for each 30 seconds of ad time.

But in the world of Super Bowl advertising that Apple itself helped to create, it may be money well spent, since recent surveys indicate up to 10 percent of the audience tunes in for the ads.

``There is much debate inside corporations about whether airing a commercial during the Super Bowl makes financial sense,'' said Douglas Stayman, an associate professor of marketing at Cornell University who monitors Super Bowl advertising. ``But what is certain is that these pricey spots attract the world's attention and bring a good deal of prominence and attention to a corporation.''

``Being on the Super Bowl carries a disproportionate amount of value in viewers' minds,'' said Ken Segall, creative director of the Apple account for the TBWA/Chiat/Day advertising agency. ``It somehow gives you an aura of greatness and importance for being there.''

On the lineup

That's the reason viewers will see a new Jerry Seinfeld-American Express ad; the Budweiser frogs finally speak; ads launching the new Intel Pentium III chip; the introduction of Crispy, the newest M&M; and the first network spot for the World Wrestling Federation, which makes fun of the WWF in much the way ESPN spoofs itself in its ads.

The importance advertisers now give to their Super Sunday spots didn't always exist.

The ratings (usually the highest of the year) and the size of the audience (more than 130 million viewers last year) were acknowledged during the first 17 years of the Super Bowl. But it wasn't until 1984 and the Apple ad for the Macintosh that the concept of advertising as an event took hold.

The spot, which cost a then-unheard-of $1 million to make and aired only once, showed a group of people apparently held captive in a huge room where a Big Brother figure raved at them from a theater screen. A woman shatters the screen with a sledgehammer, symbolizing the liberating impact Apple hoped its new machine would have.

The commercial had such an impact on the public -- it generated far more post-game discussion than the 38-9 whipping the Raiders laid on the Washington Redskins -- that advertisers began to use the Super Bowl for the kickoffs of major campaigns, introducing new products and establishing brand names.

In subsequent years, the Super Bowl's ad lineup included Apple's controversial ``lemmings'' ad; the introduction of pop icons such as Bud Light's Spuds MacKenzie and Budweiser's croaking frogs; Ray Charles popularizing the line ``You've Got the Right One, Baby,'' for Diet Pepsi; Dennis Hopper's sneaker-sniffing sports fan for Nike; and -- of course -- the long-running Bud Bowl.

``In order to have your commercial stand out above the rest now, you need to create a spot that is more spectacular than the one that ran before,'' Stayman said. ``The one thing advertisers don't want is their ad getting lost in the shuffle.''

For some new companies, that has meant rolling the dice on a single Super Bowl spot. ``Some companies spend entire ad budgets on this one event, which doesn't seem like a good strategy,'' Stayman said, ``but I think making the Super Bowl part of one's ad campaign can be most beneficial.''

For example, HotJobs.com -- a New York-based job search Web site -- will toss all $2 million of its advertising budget at a 30-second spot in the game's third quarter. ``We needed to step out in a big way,'' said Richard Johnson, CEO of HotJobs. ``Running an ad in the Super Bowl has lasting effects -- it's not just 30 seconds.''

Will it be worth the big expenditure? Ask the first Internet company to advertise during the Super Bowl: Autobytel.com, an Irvine-based car dealer that had been in business less than two years when it bought an ad in the 1997 Super Bowl. It spent about 25 percent of its revenue to buy and make the ad.

But, according to founder Pete Ellis, revenue jumped so much after the ad appeared that the company returned to advertise during the 1998 Super Bowl. ``We got a pretty big bang for the buck,'' he said.

Not that every ad works. ``You bomb out,'' said Segall of TBWA/Chiat/Day, ``and it hurts you.''

The most recent example: the ill-fated 1997 Holiday Inn ad featuring a transvestite at a class reunion. It drew such flak that it was never shown again, and Holiday Inn has not returned to the Super Bowl.

`Lemmings' disaster

In fact, the controversy surrounding Apple's 1985 ``lemmings'' ad -- viewers thought the sight of businesspeople walking off a cliff was too bloodthirsty -- was one of the reasons the company decided to forgo the Super Bowl for 14 years.

According to Segall, it wasn't until last summer that Apple decided to return to the big game: ``Steve Jobs had suggested in the springtime that we come up with an ad about the Y2K issue, and we had kicked that around for a couple of months without, frankly, much great success.

``Then this idea of using HAL came up in the early summer, and we had an ad together within 48 hours and showed it to Steve. And he said, `Why don't we think about this for the Super Bowl?'''

Segall said, however, that after buying the time, Apple and its ad agency began to second-guess themselves: ``We kept asking ourselves, `Is this really what we want to run?'''

Finally, this month, Apple asked Fox to resell its spot and -- as late as Friday -- the company was telling reporters that it would be not be represented on the telecast.

What changed minds about airing the spot was the reaction to the commercial itself. HAL's eerily calm voice asks, ``Dave, do you remember 2000, when computers began to misbehave?'' In the end, HAL says: ``You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you, Dave? Dave? Can you hear me, Dave?''

The relatively simple ad -- it cost $250,000 to produce -- got a huge response at Macworld. Then over the next couple of weeks, an online version of the commercial was downloaded off www.apple.com more than 250,000 times.

``In the end, it got to be an easy decision to make because of the firestorm of reaction from people,'' Segall said.

On Monday, the commercial was pulled off Apple's Web site. It will not return until after it airs sometime shortly after 3:18 p.m. Sunday.

See the thread discussion Media: Apple's HAL Y2k Commercial to Air on Super Bowl ...

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000QXU

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), January 27, 1999

Answers

Hmmm... 1984, the Apple ad for the Lisa. People remember the ad but the product is long forgotten. In fact I recall on that Monday people didn't know what that ad was selling, but a girl threw a hammer through this big TV screen. And nobody thought Orwell's world was any larger or smaller of a threat because of that spot.

I don't expect much more of a connection between Y2K, HAL9000 and David Borman (from a movie HOW long ago that hasn't even been on TV in how many years?) and the IMac. In fact I'll bet that whatever new Budwieser frog or lizard commercial they show gets more audience attention than the Y2K angle of HAL's actions in 2001.

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), January 27, 1999.

But once again, in retrospect, historians will rightly conclude that Apple was/is remarkable. Bravo to Apple for bringing Y2K to the forefront with punch, humor & class.

Ashton & Leska in Cascadia, happy with their iMac in newbie heaven

xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx

-- Leska (allaha@earthlink.net), January 27, 1999.

At least this year they will have power and telecom services to broadcast it.

Spoke about Y2K in front of some rep's from the governor's office a couple days ago at a legislative briefing - got a big "Oh S**t" when I mentioned Super Bowl and Atlanta and Y2K at the same time.

Atlanta doesn't look like it is ready for anything but failure so far - absolutely nothing from the city about preparations or repair efforts.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), January 29, 1999.