Ridley Scott reveals, 38 years later, his reaction to the world’s most famous ad: Apple’s 1984

Scott has revealed what he saw so special about “1984”!

In 1984 Apple launched what would become one of the most famous commercials in the world, introducing his Macintosh 128K. It has been used on many more occasions by Apple itself and even by its rivals. In 2020, Fornite exploited the content as part of a campaign accusing Apple of monopolistic practices. Y still giving what to talk about.

In a recent interview shared from The Hollywood Reporter Apple 1984 director Ridley Scott has revealed his first reaction upon reading the script for the controversial video. Like the whole world, Scott was also surprised by the lines that came into his hands. And it is that, unlike other products, it was then that he saw “advertising as an art form”.

There’s always something to say about Apple’s “1984”

Interestingly, when the commercial proposal came into his hands at the Chiat/Day agency, Scott knew very little about Apple and instead thought it was a product for The Beatles:

“They said, ‘No, no, no. Apple is this guy named Steve Jobs’. I said, ‘Who the hell is Steve Jobs?’ They said, ‘It’s probably going to be something.’”

Shortly after finding out who he would be working for, Scott felt that there was something really different about the script:

“My God. They are not saying what it is, they are not showing what it is. They’re not even saying what he does. It was advertising as an art form. It was devastatingly effective.”

However, prior to its broadcast at the Super Bowl, the video was broadcast at midnight on a national television channel, generating negative reactions from the few people who saw it:

“We also learned that the ad’s pre-test results were so bad that the ad agency didn’t show them to Apple.”.

But as has happened many times in Apple’s history, Steve Jobs trusted this different proposal and went ahead, buying 90 seconds of ad time during the Super Bowl, before the rest of Apple’s board saw it. And the rest is history.

Related topics: Apple

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