Forty years of selling the future
Apple, Advertised
From a sledgehammer thrown through Big Brother to a hydraulic press crushing a guitar, these are the campaigns that sold Apple as a way of life rather than a box of chips. Tap any spot to watch it.
“1984”
A lone runner hurls a sledgehammer through a screen of Big Brother, freeing a grey dystopia. Aired nationally just once. “You’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.”
Open on YouTube ↗“Lemmings”
The doomed follow-up to “1984”: blindfolded businesspeople whistling as they march off a cliff. It insulted the very customers it courted, flopped hard, and helped get the agency briefly fired.
Open on YouTube ↗“Think Different”
Black-and-white footage of Einstein, Gandhi, Earhart and Dylan over a manifesto for misfits and rebels. It announced Steve Jobs’ return and reminded the world what Apple was for.
Open on YouTube ↗iMac: “Say hello”
Jeff Goldblum drawls his way through the Bondi-blue iMac’s pitch: there’s no step three. The internet, in a translucent egg, simple enough that the ad barely had to explain it.
Open on YouTube ↗iPod: Silhouettes
Black dancers on saturated colour fields, white earbuds glowing, set to Jet, Feist and U2. The white cord became a status symbol you could spot across a subway car.
Open on YouTube ↗“Get a Mac”
A cool young “Mac” and a stuffy, virus-ridden “PC” stand on white limbo for 66 deadpan spots. One of the most successful ad campaigns of its decade, and it left a lot of people rolling their eyes at Windows.
Open on YouTube ↗iPhone: “Hello”
A montage of film and TV legends (Lucy, Bogart, E.T.) answering phones and saying “hello,” ending on the new iPhone. Aired during the Oscars, months before anyone could buy one.
Open on YouTube ↗“There’s an app for that”
A simple demo format that minted a catchphrase so durable Apple trademarked it. Whatever you needed, a level, a translator, a guitar tuner, “there’s an app for that.”
Open on YouTube ↗“Misunderstood”
A sullen teen seems glued to his phone all Christmas, until he plays back the family movie he was quietly filming the whole time. It won an Emmy and made a lot of people cry into their eggnog.
Open on YouTube ↗“Designed by Apple in California”
Jony Ive, near-whispering over soft light and slow motion: “This is it. This is what matters.” A pure-design brand spot with no products in sight, run during a rocky stretch for the company.
Open on YouTube ↗“Shot on iPhone”
Apple plastered billboards worldwide with photos taken by ordinary owners, credited by name. The camera was good enough that customers made the ads themselves, and it won a Cannes Grand Prix.
Open on YouTube ↗HomePod: “Welcome Home”
FKA twigs comes home, plays a song, and her cramped apartment stretches and warps into a dance sequence. Directed by Spike Jonze, it plays more like a music video than an ad.
Open on YouTube ↗AirPods: “Bounce”
A man slips in his AirPods and the city becomes a trampoline. He bounces off pavement, walls and rooftops to Anderson .Paak, with no dialogue or copy, just motion.
Open on YouTube ↗“The Underdogs”
A scrappy office team scrambles to land a pizza-box account, using Macs and iPhones at every turn. A long-running comedy series that doubles as a product demo, and got sharper through the pandemic.
Open on YouTube ↗“Privacy. That’s iPhone.”
People overshare wildly in public, then the spots snap to the iPhone locking it all away. Apple used privacy as a selling point, drawing a sharp line between itself and ad-funded competitors.
Open on YouTube ↗“Crush!”
A giant hydraulic press flattens a tower of cameras, instruments and art supplies into a slim iPad. Meant to show everything the iPad contains, it instead read to many viewers as crushing human creativity. Apple publicly apologised.
Open on YouTube ↗Last updated: 2026-08-13