THINK DIFFERENT CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW
The decision of Apple Computer, Inc., to make its technology proprietary had constricted the computer manufacturer’s product growth in the 1980s and allowed computer-hardware manufacturers such as International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) and Compaq Computer Corporation to blossom by using Microsoft Corporation’s operating systems. In early 1997 Apple was in danger of ending its second consecutive profitless year. In an attempt to salvage the Apple brand, Apple’s board of directors invited the company’s cofounder, Steve Jobs, to lead as CEO. The homecoming was bittersweet. More than a decade earlier the board of directors had asked Jobs to resign. After his return to leadership Jobs consolidated Apple’s advertising account with one agency, reduced Apple’s product line from 14 to 4, and hoped to build consumer confidence in the Apple brand with a campaign called ‘‘Think Different.’’ The $90 million ‘‘Think Different’’ campaign debuted on September 28, 1997, with a 60-second spot aired during the television network premiere of the animated film A Toy Story. The global campaign, which included television spots, print ads in newspapers and magazines, and outdoor displays on billboards, bus wraps, and wall coverings, featured stark black-and-white photographs of maverick thinkers such as Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, Jr., Sir Richard Branson, and John Lennon. The first spot featured a voice-over by the actor Richard Dreyfuss and ended with the Apple logo and the tagline ‘‘Think Different.’’ It was produced by the advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day, although the ‘‘Think Different’’ concept itself had emerged from a collaborative effort between the agency’s worldwide creative director, Lee Clow, and Steve Jobs. The campaign ended in 2002.
‘‘Think Different’’ improved Apple’s bottom line. In April 1998 the company reported its second straight profitable quarter after nearly two years and $2 billion in losses. Although Apple increased its market share at the beginning of ‘‘Think Different,’’ in early 2002 it was again posting profit losses. Some advertising analysts criticized ‘‘Think Different’’ for aiming Apple products at artists, writers, designers, and revolutionaries—all minorities in the computer-using community.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
In August 1997 Jobs, who had cofounded Apple Computer in his garage 20 years earlier, returned to the company to become its interim chief executive officer. At that time Apple was in the midst of a crisis. Its share of the computer market had plummeted from a peak of 14 percent in 1993 to below 3 percent four years later. ‘‘The company was in a death spiral,’’ its chief financial officer, Fred Anderson, told Newsweek in 1998. Jobs set out to address the problems. He believed that Apple’s difficulties stemmed from the company’s incoherent agenda, which consisted of efforts to move various products without a clearly defined purpose or method. Jobs attempted to redefine the company’s strategy by concentrating on Apple’s key markets: design and publishing, education, and consumers who purchased personal computers for use in the home. He also cut Apple’s product line from 14 to 4.
Jobs took charge of Apple’s image-making process as well. When he arrived back at the company, Apple was running more than 25 different advertising campaigns. The company’s domestic and international sales offices advertised independently from, and were often not coordinated with, the campaigns conducted from Apple’s headquarters in California. Apple’s advertising agency during this period, BBDO, had opted to focus its advertisements on specific Apple products and the technological features of Apple computers. These efforts did nothing to allay consumers’ fears that Apple’s demise was imminent. ‘‘The talk of Apple going under was the worst thing for the company,’’ said Jessica Schulman, the TBWA\Chiat\Day art director for the ‘‘Think Different’’ campaign. ‘‘People won’t buy computer equipment that they think won’t be around in the next year.’’ Jobs replaced BBDO with TBWA\Chiat\Day and began to work with his friend Clow, the agency’s creative director, on new advertising strategies. The two had collaborated in the past to forge an identity for Apple’s Macintosh brand in the renowned ‘‘1984’’ commercial. In an effort to bring order to Apple’s marketing chaos, the new campaign was to be a unified, worldwide effort overseen by TBWA\Chiat\Day’s international and domestic offices.

TARGET MARKET
The ‘‘Think Different’’ ads reached out to what Apple termed its ‘‘installed base,’’ those consumers who had purchased Apple computer equipment in the past.
Apple consistently performed well in three core markets:
designers and desktop publishers, educators and students, and home users. It was these groups that were most likely to have bought Apple products and who were keeping the company afloat during its downturn. But with the publicized record of Apple’s financial troubles, many of them were not purchasing new Apple systems for fear that the company would soon fold, leaving them with obsolete machines. ‘‘Our number one priority was to make people realize that we were still here and still fighting for this brand,’’ said Rhona Hamilton, a marketing representative for Apple.
In order to appeal to these users, the campaign stressed the creative roots of the Apple brand. The people who were selected to appear in the ‘‘Think Different’’ campaign were bold thinkers, men and women who were not merely great in a certain field but who were also innovative and independent and who had changed the worlds in which they moved. By aligning itself with the likes of Muhammad Ali, Bob Dylan, and Albert Einstein, Apple clearly strove to deliver a message about itself and its products. ‘‘After talking to a lot of consumers and Macintosh enthusiasts, our strategic direction was to stop acting like a computer company and start acting like a company dedicated to creative thinking,’’ said Schulman. The ‘‘Think Different’’ ads stressed that Apple was an innovative company that, with its creative users, could change the world. With these images and themes, Apple hoped to appeal to its core markets, people who as artists, illustrators, designers, and students valued their own creativity and who viewed themselves as being somewhat outside the mainstream. As Brandweek noted, ‘‘‘Think Different’ [was] clear that it [was] not targeting its message to everyone.’’

COMPETITION
As a manufacturer of both computers and operating systems, Apple was involved in two highly contested markets. Apple’s line of computer hardware competed directly with that of other makers of personal computers, most notably Dell, Compaq, and IBM. Apple and Dell also vied for market share in the growing business of built-to-order computers. Apple, through its online Apple Store, and Dell, the fastest-growing major computer maker, both offered consumers the opportunity to customize their systems at the point of purchase. Apple’s operating system, Mac OS, faced its stiffest challenge from Microsoft’s windows. The competition between Apple and Microsoft had been particularly difficult for Apple because Microsoft had succeeded in making its Windows system a near standard for business and commercial users. Particularly in light of Apple’s financial difficulties and loss of consumer confidence before Jobs returned to the company, Apple was losing a great deal of ground to the Microsoft system. Apple’s share of the personal computing market, which stood at 14 percent in 1993, had plummeted to 2.8 percent by 1997.
Apple was not alone in its advertising campaign. By 1998 its major competitors had all launched branding campaigns that were attempting to create favorable images of the companies rather than focus on individual products. IBM spent more than $140 million on its massive ‘‘Solutions for a Small Planet’’ branding campaign. In 1998 Dell set out on a $70 million ‘‘Be Direct’’ worldwide image campaign, which marked the first time the company had sought to target consumers outside of trade publications. Dell’s TV spot, which featured a mouse blowing up a maze, rather than running through it, to obtain a chunk of cheese, aired during evening network news programs and on national cable channels such as CNN, FN, and CNBC; the print version appeared in mainstream magazines such as Newsweek, Time, and Forbes. Compaq spent an estimated $300 million annually on global campaigns and announced plans to double its U.S. consumer ad budget in 1998 to approximately $50 million. Microsoft had taken its ‘‘Where Do You Want to Go Today’’ campaign onto prime-time television and into national magazines. Intel, the manufacturer of the Pentium processors employed in most PCs, had also continued its ongoing and widely popular ‘‘Bunny People’’ campaign, which centered on disco-dancing Intel technicians.

MARKETING STRATEGY
Upon his return Jobs recognized immediately that Apple’s public image needed to be reinvigorated if the company were to survive. Although Apple had long been viewed as making superior computing equipment, the company was in danger of going the way of Sony’s illfated Betamax videotape system, for few people were willing to invest in a product from a company that was believed to be on the verge of extinction. To counter this perception, Jobs brought in TBWA\Chiat\Day and worked closely with Clow and others in the agency to develop the campaign that became ‘‘Think Different.’’ The creators of the campaign realized that, because the company’s image was so tarnished, Apple could not revitalize its brand by relying on ads touting its products. Instead the campaign sought to celebrate the creative genius of its subjects and to assert that Apple, too, had a unique role to play on the world stage by making the tools that allowed creative people to achieve extraordinary feats. ‘‘‘Think Different’ celebrates the soul of the Apple brand—that creative people with passion can change the world for the better,’’ Jobs told the Wall Street Journal Europe in April 1998. Apple wanted to kick off the campaign in dramatic fashion and decided that the first advertisement should run on television during the September 28, 1997, network television premiere of A Toy Story on ABC. Although difficulties in obtaining the rights to use and publish the photographs of the subjects of the campaign nearly caused Apple to miss its target, the 60-second spot aired as planned. The commercial consisted of the blackand-white images of the 12 visionary thinkers and the reading of a manifesto written in part by Jobs and read by actor Dreyfuss. ‘‘Here’s to the crazy ones,’’ began the voice-over. ‘‘The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.’’ A shorter version was also produced. To reinforce the message of the television commercials, Apple conducted a brief second phase of the campaign and ran print ads in major newspapers, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, that consisted of the text of the manifesto and some of the images from the television campaign. After this initial burst Apple continued to run the television spots during such highly rated television programs as ER, Prime Time Live, Frasier, and Ally McBeal and soon followed with its first wave of magazine ads. Forgoing computer trade and industry publications, Apple instead placed its ads on the back covers of magazines such as BusinessWeek, Time, Newsweek, the New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and the Atlantic Monthly and in advertising trade journals such as Advertising Age and Adweek. These ads, which incorporated new figures, such as choreographer Martha Graham and architect Frank Lloyd Wright into the campaign, consisted solely of a single black-and-white photograph of the subject. The only text was the phrase ‘‘Think Different,’’ the Apple logo, and the address of the company’s website. In hopes of piquing audience interest all the more, the ads did not identify the subject in any way.
By its final year ‘‘Think Different’’ had transitioned into a print and billboard campaign. For example, billboards placed on the tower of the Pine Street Inn in Boston featured black-and-white images of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. The tagline ‘‘Think Different’’ and an image of Rosa Parks covered buses in New York City. Parks, an African-American, had become famous when she refused to sit at the back of a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955. The campaign ended in mid-2002, but it briefly resurfaced on October 24, 2005, when Parks, the woman dubbed the ‘‘Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement,’’ died. To pay homage to Parks, Apple placed her photo on its website’s home page with the text ‘‘Think Different’’ in the image’s upper-left corner.

GRAMMAR TAKES A HIT
The choice of the tagline ‘‘Think Different’’ rather than ‘‘Think Differently’’ was deliberate. Even though ‘‘Think Different’’ drew public flak for not being grammatically correct, Apple settled on the line because it ‘‘conveyed a total change in the whole body of what you think about,’’ said Jessica Schulman, art director at TBWA\Chiat\Day, the agency that developed the campaign. ‘‘Instead of thinking in your everyday way, ‘Think Different.’’’

OUTCOME
The ‘‘Think Different’’ campaign elicited an outpouring of opinions. Apple’s headquarters was inundated with letters, faxes, phone calls, and E-mails commenting on the campaign. Some questioned the cast of innovative thinkers included in the ads, others were perplexed by the message, and still others were delighted with Apple’s attempt to pay tribute to its heroes. People formed websites spontaneously, discussing who the individuals were, whether the phrase ‘‘Think Different’’ was grammatically correct, and why Apple’s ad campaign would focus on a group of people who for the most part had never touched a computer. Apple and TBWA\Chiat\Day considered the attention paid to the campaign to be a sign of its impact.
At first the advertising industry praised the ‘‘Think Different’’ campaign. The December 15, 1997, edition of USA Today listed Apple’s ‘‘bolder’’ ads as one of the year’s best campaigns. As reported in the same article, ad agency creative directors ranked the campaign as the second best of the year. On May 18, 1998, Advertising Age also voiced its approval: ‘‘The decision to celebrate the kind of independent thinking that has always typified Mac users seems now to make total sense.’’ In fact, the article stated, ‘‘the shots of heroes, geniuses, wildmen, and iconoclasts assembled here makes a strong emotional statement for Apple’s underdog role.’’ Not everyone loved ‘‘Think Different,’’ however. At first Apple had to contend with criticism for launching a ‘‘campaign of dead people.’’ Apple marketing representative Rhona Hamilton spoke of having to educate consumers about what the campaign was attempting to convey. CMP Techwire reported that the company was drawing bad press for undertaking an expensive marketing effort during a period of financial losses. A USA Today Ad Track survey revealed that consumers preferred Intel’s ‘‘Bunny People’’ spots, which were ranked as the most popular technology-industry commercial of 1997.
The campaign had a positive effect on Apple’s bottom line. In April 1998 Apple reported its second straight profitable quarter after nearly two years and $2 billion in losses. Apple attributed the increasing sales to the ‘‘Think Different’’ campaign. ‘‘It let people know that we’re still around and not going anywhere, so that they can feel good about buying the product,’’ said Hamilton. Apple’s market share rose to 4.1 percent. Unfortunately for Apple, the computer maker’s American market share hovered at about 5 percent for the campaign’s final four years. Advertising critics began discrediting ‘‘Think Different’’ for limiting the Apple brand to the small minority of ‘‘revolutionaries’’ that used computers. ‘‘For years, the Apple brand has been associated with artists, writers and designers,’’ Sandra Garcia wrote in the August 2, 2002, issue of Shoot, an ad-industry magazine. ‘‘The so-called ‘creative types’ who seemingly belonged to this secret society of Mac users while the rest of the working public toiled in a clunky PC world.’’ In 2002 Apple suffered with the majority of the technology industry and posted its first profit loss since 1997. In mid-2002 Apple officially replaced its ‘‘Think Different’’ campaign with one titled ‘‘Switchers.’’

SWITCHERS CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW
By June 2002, after 18 months of new products that included the eMac, OS X operating system, G4 processor, iPod, and new flat-screen monitor, Apple Computer, Inc., still held only 5 percent of the U.S. market and between 2 and 3 percent of the worldwide market in personal computers. Apple’s proprietary lock on technology in the 1980s had forced hardware manufacturers like Dell, Gateway, and Compaq to avoid Apple software and to ship their PCs with Microsoft’s operating system. Apple isolated itself from the masses even more with its 1997 ‘‘Think Different’’ campaign, which associated the brand with revolutionary figures like Mahatma Gandhi and John Lennon. It was to attract a broader range of computer users that Apple launched its ‘‘Switchers’’ campaign in 2002.
With the cost estimated at $75 million, the ‘‘Switchers’’ campaign was executed by Apple’s longtime partner and marketing firm TBWA\Chiat\Day (TBWA\C\D). Using print, television, and the company’s website, the ‘‘Switchers’’ campaign began with Apple’s requests for testimonials from its loyal customer base. After receiving more than 1,000 submissions, TBWA\C\D hired the documentary filmmaker Errol Morris to create 32 television spots that featured people ad-libbing their reasons for switching from the Windowsbased PC to Apple. Hoping to connect with a wide demographic, the ‘‘Switchers’’ spots starred common people like a network administrator, a lawyer, an illustrator, a small-business owner, a programmer, and a DJ. The first spot aired on June 10, 2002. Early indicators led Apple to believe that the campaign was helping to capture business from the Windows market. In the second half of 2002, for example, 4 of 10 Mac purchases in Apple stores were made by first-time owners. Despite early successes and a few impressive ad accolades, including Adweek ’s 2002 Campaign of the Year Award, there was little improvement in Apple’s market share. Brandweek noted that the research firms Gartner Dataquest and IDC showed Apple’s worldwide market share unchanged in October 2003, after the campaign had ended.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
In 1997 Apple launched its $100 million ‘‘Think Different’’ campaign, which joined images of cultural icons like Bob Dylan, Albert Einstein, and Pablo Picasso to the Apple brand. The effort backfired on Apple, however, by pigeonholing the company as part of a small community of writers, photographers, educators, and graphic designers. By 2002 the tech industry’s slump was also affecting Apple, which lost money in the first fiscal quarter of that year. Despite industry trends in 2002, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that the company planned to ‘‘innovate our way through the downturn’’ by developing new hardware and software, along with opening 51 Apple stores throughout the United States.
In the weeks preceding the ‘‘Switchers’’ campaign Jobs told Adweek, ‘‘We’re going after the ninety-five out of 100 people not using Macs.’’ The opening of new Apple stores also was meant to play a major role in the forthcoming campaign by giving consumers a place to purchase Apple computers. Because of contractual disagreements between Apple and retailers, many Apple products were not available at larger stores. Apple supposedly stopped allowing Best Buy to sell iMacs, for example, after the company resisted stocking the regulated range of colors that Apple insisted upon. Sears and CompUSA had similar fallouts with Apple. Increasing the number of Apple stores would allow the company to sell its own products on its own terms.
‘‘We’ve been giving people a ton of compelling reasons to switch to a Mac,’’ Jobs told USA Today. ‘‘We’ve got 10,000 people writing to us to say, ‘I’ve switched,’ but people have lots of questions. We decided that to get people over their concerns, they should hear from people just like them.’’

TARGET MARKET
The 1997 ‘‘Think Different’’ Campaign was widely criticized for excluding the average computer user by targeting what Therese Poletti of the San Jose Mercury News called ‘‘radical thinkers such as Albert Einstein, John Lennon and other rebellious, creative types.’’ It was for this reason that TBWA\C\D aimed the ‘‘Switchers’’ campaign at Windows users, the 95 percent of computer users who fell outside Apple’s market share. It was also important, Jobs emphasized to TBWA\C\D, to target the Windows user who wanted a Mac but who feared that switching to one would discombobulate his or her digital life. ‘‘There are a lot more people out there that use Windows computers than no computers, so that’s a very rich target for us,’’ Jobs told the Wall Street Journal. ‘‘For those thinking of switching to the Mac, we’d like to help that process along.’’ For the ads TBWA\C\D and director Morris used mostly ordinary consumers who were accustomed to Windows, people such as a network administrator, an illustrator, a small-business owner, and a programmer. Jobs also wanted to dispel the myth that Apple was only for consumers who had never used a computer before. When USA Today ’s Ad Track polled consumers on their reaction to the ‘‘Switchers’’ campaign, the most favorable response was from 30- to 39-year-olds, 23 percent of whom liked the ads. The worst response came from 18- to 24-year-olds, with 47 percent disliking them.

COMPETITION
In 2001 Microsoft, the antagonist of the ‘‘Switchers’’ campaign, was the biggest threat to Apple, with a staggering 93 percent of all operating systems for personal computers. Although some analysts favored the stability of the Mac’s UNIX-based operating system, others valued the wider product selection offered by Microsoft.
John Torro of the Saint Petersburg Times wrote,
‘‘Windows XP supports about 12,000 device and software drivers. The Mac? Probably a fraction of that. What that means is you have more flexibility if you want to upgrade or change your computer. The PC world is wide open; Apple dictates the Mac world.’’ Apple did, however, outshine Microsoft in advertising. To counter the ‘‘Switchers’’ campaign, Microsoft’s website featured stories and photos of ‘‘real people’’ who had left Macintosh for Windows. When it was later revealed that the Microsoft photos were stock images and that the stories had been written by a marketing team, Microsoft’s antics were widely criticized.
In PC hardware Hewlett-Packard, after merging with Compaq, was the worldwide leader, with 16.1 percent of the market in 2002. The company’s share was slipping, however, to Dell, which held 15.7 percent worldwide and an even greater percentage in the United States. Dell was praised by advertising aficionados for its clear vision of the product it was advertising. Mike Dell, founder and CEO, spent his efforts solely pushing Dell PCs and the company’s ‘‘just-in-time’’ manufacturing. By 2005 Dell, with 16.9 percent of the worldwide market for PCs, had become the leader. ‘‘Dell has a lot of momentum. It grew at rates above 24 percent, year over year,’’ said Loren Loverde, an analyst with IDC. ‘‘HP is doing well relative to its merger issues, and it also means that we could have a pretty close race . . . for a number of quarters.’’

MARKETING STRATEGY
Jobs attended the showing of Errol Morris’s short film The Academy Awards Movie, which played at the 2002 Academy Awards. Later, in response to the film, Jobs was quoted as saying, ‘‘This guy has to do the new Apple campaign.’’ But Apple had considered Morris to direct the ‘‘Switchers’’ campaign even before the 2002 Oscars.
Before Morris began work on the ‘‘Switchers’’ campaign, Apple requested stories, through Apple.com, from people who had switched from Windows to Apple. After selecting 60 replies from thousands of submissions, Morris and his team spent 10 days interviewing candidates in New York, Los Angeles, and Boston. Morris set the camera behind a half-silvered mirror, on which he projected his face. He called the invention, which allowed him to make eye contact with the person being interviewed, an Interrotron.
Looking into the camera lens ‘‘is the very opposite of conversation,’’ Morris said in Adweek. ‘‘Interrotron is a way of having your cake and eating it too.’’ During the filming TBWA\C\D representatives gave Morris details about each interviewee. None of the 32 commercials that were created were scripted. ‘‘Steve [Jobs] did much of the deciding; he was the impartial jury. The ones who made it were the most believable,’’ Lee Clow, chief creative officer at TBWA\C\D, told Adweek. ‘‘We also made a conscious effort to avoid choosing [those who might be perceived as] ‘Apple people.’’’ In addition to the ordinary people featured in the ‘‘Switchers’’ ads, four celebrities—actor-comedian Will Ferrell, skateboarder Tony Hawk, musician Yo-Yo Ma, and surfer Kelly Slater—made appearances. Most of the ads, however, featured people like a programmer, lawyer, disc jockey, or software projects manager. One featured a student, Ellen Feiss, who stood before a white screen while she explained her frustrations with Windows: ‘‘I was writing a paper on the PC, and it was, like, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. And then, like, half of my paper was gone. And I was, like . . . heh. It devoured my paper. It was a really good paper. And then I had to do it again and I had to do it fast so it wasn’t as good. It’s kind of a . . . bummer.’’
The ‘‘Switchers’’ spot with Aaron Adams, a Windows network administrator, which Adweek deemed the campaign’s most poignant, helped TBWA\C\D earn the publication’s honor as Best Campaign of 2002. In the spot Adams said, ‘‘I’m a Windows guy who’s changed to Macintosh. I deal with Windows all day and when I’m tired of fighting with that, I come home to a Macintosh that works. I haven’t found anything I can do with a PC that I cannot do with my Mac.’’
The ‘‘Switchers’’ spots first aired on June 10, 2002, on cable networks such as ESPN, CNBC, and Comedy Central and then appeared on ABC and NBC. Print ads appeared during the same month in magazines like Time and Newsweek. Even though Jobs denied animosity between Apple and Microsoft, ‘‘Switchers’’ ads in Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and the New Yorker boasted that Windows ‘‘has made a good business out of copying the innovative Mac.’’ Both print and television advertisements directed the audience to Apple.com/ Switch, where the company posted reasons for switching to the Mac, along with positive press reports to reinforce the message.

INTERROTRON
Errol Morris, the director of the ‘‘Switchers’’ television spots, also worked with Michael Williams to create The Fog of War, which won the 2003 Academy Award as the best documentary feature. The film consisted of Morris asking Robert S. McNamara, former U.S. secretary of defense, candid questions about his involvement with the 1945 firebombing of Tokyo, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and the initial U.S. deployments in Vietnam. The well-crafted documentary allowed McNamara to explain his views on the morality of war through his ‘‘Eleven lessons from the life of Robert S. McNamara.’’ For The Fog of War Morris used techniques similar to those of the ‘‘Switchers’’ commercials, including the patented Interrotron and the shouting of questions at the interviewee during the filming.

OUTCOME
The ‘‘Switchers’’ campaign did little to increase Apple’s market share, which was its main objective. Over the lifetime of the campaign Apple’s worldwide share remained at a meager 2 to 3 percent. Sales in Apple stores did, however, increase during the campaign, bringing in $163 million during the second half of 2002. According to USA Today, 4 of 10 of the buyers had never owned a Mac before. The ‘‘Switchers’’ campaign also earned awards from the ad industry, including Adweek’s Campaign of the Year Award for 2002. The ‘‘Switchers’’ spot with Feiss was named Best Performance in Adweek ’s 2003 Maddy Awards.
Part of the problem, according to analysts, was that, even though the ‘‘Switchers’’ stars were real people, their perceptions of Apple computers were false. Most ‘‘Switchers’’ spokespersons boasted of Mac’s advantages over Windows, such as a more stable operating system and a more intuitive functionality. As Torro wrote in the Saint Petersburg Times, ‘‘If Mac users are going to tell you that their operating system never has problems, I have some land to sell you about 20 miles out in the gulf. I’ve heard many stories about Macs getting ‘the bomb’ (the Mac version of a Windows general protection fault).’’ Apple’s PowerBook 5300 was earlier dubbed by some journalists as the ‘‘hindenbook’’ for its tendency to burst into flames.
When the ‘‘Switchers’’ campaign was launched in 2002, Apple still had enough capital to float through the industry slump of the decade’s early years. In June 2002 Jobs stated, ‘‘Apple and Dell are the only two making money in the industry right now. It’s a tough business now. But I’m an optimist. I think things will get better.’’ By 2004 Apple had shifted its advertising priorities to the wildly successful iPod, which earned an incredible $1.2 billion during the first quarter of 2005 alone.

SILHOUETTE CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW
Released by Apple Computer, Inc., in November 2001, the iPod rapidly grew in sales and by 2005 had become the world’s top-selling MP3 player. With a 1,000-song capacity, the first iPod worked only with Apple computers and retailed at $400. From 2003 to 2005, however, Apple ferociously promoted five new Windows-compatible iPod models, along with the company’s digital music store, iTunes. In an attempt to define the fun associated with the iPod brand and to steer advertising away from the Apple computer, the company released its ‘‘Silhouette’’ campaign.
In October 2003 ad agency TBWA\Chiat\Day (TBWA\C\D) introduced outdoor ‘‘Silhouette’’ ads in Los Angeles, followed by a nationwide print and television launch. All ads displayed black silhouettes of people listening to white iPods and dancing in front of radiant green, yellow, fuchsia, and pink backgrounds. The television spots were accompanied by upbeat music from bands like N.E.R.D. and the Black Eye Peas. The band U2 shocked fans and critics in 2004 by endorsing iPod through the release of a new single, ‘‘Vertigo.’’ Shrugging off criticism, U2’s front man, Bono, stated that the iPod was ‘‘the most beautiful object art in music culture since the electric guitar.’’ Seventy-two hours after the U2 endorsement, Apple stock reached a 52-week high of $53.20 per share. Apple reportedly spent $49.6 million on the ‘‘Silhouette’’ campaign between January and August of 2004.
Not only did ‘‘Silhouette’’ earn TBWA\C\D a Global Effie from the New York American Marketing Association and a Kelly Award from the Magazine Publishers of America, the agency was nominated as the U.S. Agency of the Year for 2004 by Adweek. Even though analysts’ early forecasts for iPod sales were $400 million, product improvement and the ‘‘Silhouette’’ campaign helped Apple reach an incredible $1.2 billion in net sales during the first quarter of 2005 alone. Despite the fact that iPod’s market share had dropped from 92 percent in October 2004 to 87 percent by March 2005, demand still overshadowed supply.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Led by CEO Steve Jobs, Apple held a meager 2.5 percent share of the worldwide computer market in 2001. Learning from its proprietary mistakes in the 1980s, the company released Windows-compatible iPods in 2002. Apple also allowed third-party companies like BMW, Bose Corporation, and Griffin Technology to create iPod accessories, which led to more than $100 million in sales in 2004. Apple even allowed Hewlett-Packard to release the Apple iPod from HP.
The first commercial for iPod, also created by TBWA\C\D, aired in 2001. It showed a bespectacled man huddled over an Apple iBook. At first the audience heard only the man’s clicking keyboard, until music from Propellerheads’s ‘‘Take California’’ grew louder. By the end of the spot it became apparent that the man was downloading music onto his iPod. Next TBWA\C\D shifted away from computer-centric ads to develop spots with people singing out loud while wearing iPods. One commercial, which featured a young boy singing Eminem’s ‘‘Lose Yourself,’’ resulted in a lawsuit by Eminem, but it was settled amicably.
Apple needed success from the ‘‘Silhouette’’ campaign. By 2002 the company still had only 5 percent of the computer market. ‘‘The history of Apple is a long, complicated business story with a lot of mistakes made,’’ Lee Clow, worldwide chairman and chief creative officer of TBWA\C\D, told Advertising Age. ‘‘Particularly the decision to stick with a proprietary system for PCs which resulted in Microsoft’s dominance.’’ In 2004 iPod contributed 23 percent of Apple’s earnings. Jobs said that iPod sales ‘‘should also help introduce Windows users to Apple’s clever and stylish designs, thus encouraging more PC users to switch to Macintosh computers.’’ Apple hoped that the fun-oriented, carefree format of the ‘‘Silhouette’’ ads would appeal to a more inclusive audience than past campaigns had. Instead of pitting itself against Microsoft or PCs, Apple wanted to focus solely on the fun associated with the iPod in order to solidify its position as the top-selling MP3 player.

TARGET MARKET
According to Beth Snyder Bulik of Advertising Age, iPod’s target market ‘‘is wide, including current iPod owners looking for a second device; Gen X parents now willing to bankroll the $100 to placate their teens; and consumers with more modest income.’’ Experts like Seth Godin, an author of marketing books, explained to the Dayton Daily News that the target demographic was much larger:
‘‘It’s unusual for a product like this to cross all the gender and age lines right away, but iPod is doing both.’’ U.S. President George W. Bush, singer and songwriter Tom Petty, Queen Elizabeth II, and even the late motionpicture star Marlon Brando all owned iPods. ‘‘The new ads do a terrific job of seducing and selling, of making the target turn on and want the product, now,’’ Marian Salzman, executive vice president and chief strategy officer of Euro RSCG Worldwide, told USA Today. ‘‘Interestingly, the ads also transcend nationality and age. They are about an Apple state of mind.’’
Ad Track, USA Today ’s weekly consumer survey, stated that across age groups the ‘‘Silhouette’’ campaign was most popular with 25- to 29-year-olds. For consumers between the ages of 50 and 64, 19 percent gave ‘‘Silhouette’’ ads the highest possible rating. The iPod’s compatibility with illegally downloadable music drew criticism from some, however. Eric Garland, president of Big Champagne (a company that tracks Internet file
The iPod U2 Special Edition. sharing), told the Irish Times, ‘‘If anything, the illegal MP3 user base makes up a large part of the target market.’’ By using contemporary pop music, the ‘‘Silhouette’’ campaign directly targeted fans of N.E.R.D., the Caesars, Daft Punk, Jet, the Black Eye Peas, and, most famously, U2. This last group, notorious for turning down multimillion-dollar endorsements, not only gave Apple consent to use its music but actually released its single ‘‘Vertigo’’ in a 30-second ‘‘Silhouette’’ spot.

COMPETITION
South Korea’s ReignCom Ltd., trying to move into an MP3 market dominated by iPod, which had 92 percent of sales in 2004, launched an outdoor, print, and Web campaign for its iRiver player; the campaign featured porn star Jenna Jameson. The iRiver PMC 140 boasted video capabilities but was priced $200 above Apple’s iPod Photo. Earlier versions of iRiver MP3 players had featured radio tuners and voice recorders that were not available on iPods. For the promotion of iRiver’s H10 model, print ads showed people listening to their MP3 players and biting into apples along with the tagline ‘‘Sweeter One.’’ In 2005 iRiver ranked second in terms of market share.
By 2002 Sony Corporation, which had dominated the portable music market during the 1980s and 1990s, had lost considerable ground to the Apple iPod. In 2004 Sony released the Network Walkman, an MP3 player resembling the iPod in price and features and that was user-friendly. Sony’s U.S. advertising, lead by Young & Rubicam, featured music by Macy Gray. Advertisements in Europe, however, used edgier music by bands like Teddy Bears STHLM. One commercial featured the painter Liam Yates listening to a Sony MP3 player and working on an image resembling a ‘‘Silhouette’’ ad. In 2005 Sony released its PlayStation Portable (PSP), a handheld gaming device that played MP3s. Early on industry analysts had forecast that the PSP would be an ‘‘iPod killer,’’ but its release had little effect on iPod’s market share.

MARKETING STRATEGY
TBWA\C\D introduced outdoor ‘‘Silhouette’’ ads in Los Angeles during the second week of September 2003, immediately after Apple had announced earnings of $2.15 billion for its third fiscal quarter. On September 15 TBWA\C\D launched ‘‘Silhouette’’ print ads in newspapers. In October ‘‘Silhouette’’ ads appeared in music, sports, and men’s magazines. The campaign’s first television spot, with Duncan Milner and Eric Gunbaum as creative directors, featured silhouettes of people wearing iPods and dancing to the Black Eyed Peas’s ‘‘Hey, Mama.’’
The first three commercials were directed by Dave Myers, who, Milner told Adweek, ‘‘was great in that he knew the best choreographers, knew the dancers and knew a lot about the music.’’ In fact, it was Myers who had originally suggested that TBWA\C\D use ‘‘Hey, Mama.’’ In later television spots Myers used Jet’s ‘‘Are You Gonna Be My Girl’’ and N.E.R.D.’s ‘‘Rock Star.’’ ‘‘Silhouette’’ print ads used taglines such as ‘‘Welcome to the digital music revolution’’ and ‘‘More than 1 million iPods have been sold.’’
According to Advertising Age, Apple’s U.S. advertising budget from January to August 2004 was $49.6 million. Later in 2004 Apple spent $20 million worldwide to promote its 30-second U2 ‘‘Silhouette’’ spot using ‘‘Vertigo,’’ a single from the band’s new album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. The commercial starred U2, partially silhouetted against fuchsia, green, yellow, and blue backgrounds. In addition to the commercial, U2 cobranded with Apple by releasing the single exclusively on iTunes. Apple then released a special red and black iPod U2, with the band members’ autographs engraved on the back casing.
The iPod U2 shipped with a $50 coupon toward the download of iTune’s The Complete U2, a collection of 25 years of U2 albums. Explaining why U2 had chosen iPod for its first endorsement, Bono told the Chicago Tribune, ‘‘We looked at the iPod commercial as a rock video. We chose the director. We thought, how are we going to get our single off in the days when rock music is niche? When it’s unlikely to get a three-minute punk-rock song on top of the radio? So we piggybacked this phenomenon to get ourselves to a new, younger audience, and we succeeded.’’ The band was not paid for the ‘‘Vertigo’’ ad.
Apple continued using the ‘‘Silhouette’’ campaign well into 2005 to promote variations of the iPod, not only the iPod U2 but also the iPod Photo, iPod Mini, and iPod Shuffle, as well as its 99-cents-per-song online store, iTunes.

iPOD KNOCKOFFS
The iPod ‘‘Silhouette’’ campaign drew an outpouring of knockoffs. One came from a Fuse TV outdoor ad that showed a silhouetted Iraqi war prisoner next to a bomb resembling Apple’s logo and with the copy ‘‘iRaq.’’ Apple was reportedly infuriated by the ad. Fuse TV also produced an ad with a silhouetted stripper who pole danced next to the tagline ‘‘fuse music television. watch different.’’

EVEN THE PRESIDENT
Even U.S. President George W. Bush owned an iPod. A 2004 birthday gift from his daughters, Bush’s 10,000-song-capacity iPod only held 250 songs when its existence became known in 2005. The president’s iPod consisted of a song list predominantly made up of male artists. Busy with other things, Bush did not have time to set up the iPod himself, and he instructed an aide, Blake Gottesman, to purchase the songs from iTunes. Notable songs on the president’s play list included ‘‘Fortunate Son’’ by Credence Clearwater Revival and ‘‘Don’t Drink That Wine’’ by NWA. Joe Levy of Rolling Stone quipped, ‘‘One thing that’s interesting is that the president likes artists who don’t like him.’’

OUTCOME
Despite critics who accused Apple of overusing the campaign, ‘‘Silhouette’’ dramatically helped iPod move to the forefront of the market for portable music. The U2 spot alone bolstered Apple’s stock to a 52-week high in 2004, which added $2 billion to Apple’s overall market value. In 2004 sales of the iPod peaked, with 92 percent of the market share; this slipped to 87 percent by March 2005. Andrew Shafer, a writer for the Iowa State Daily, wrote, ‘‘[iPod’s] popularity may be attributed, at least in part, to a simple dancing Silhouette. The Silhouette, although faceless and unidentifiable, has given an identity to the iPod.’’ Despite losing ground to emerging MP3 players, in 2005 Apple reported its 16 millionth iPod sold, and iTunes was providing 82 percent of the world’s legally downloadable songs. Accessories for the iPod alone yielded $100 million in 2004.
The ‘‘Silhouette’’ campaign earned TBWA\C\D a number of prizes, including the $100,000 Kelly Award, presented by Magazine Publishers of America for the best ad competition. It also helped TBWA\C\D earn Adweek ’s honor as Agency of the Year in 2004 and a Grand Effie in 2005. ‘‘One can look at the iPod ads and easily see it’s a very good campaign,’’ Eric Einhorn, executive vice president and chief strategy officer at McCann Worldgroup, stated in the Iowa State Daily. ‘‘It really finds an iconic way to represent the musical freedom that the iPod delivers.’’

IMAC CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW
In the late 1990s technology analysts speculated that Apple Computer, Inc.’s fate hinged on its new personal computer the iMac. Apple’s share of the worldwide desktop-computer market had plummeted since 1995, the last year the company had been profitable. Ever greater numbers of consumers were buying personal computers (PCs) that ran on Microsoft’s Windows operating system rather than Apple’s version. Although Apple had pioneered user-friendly computers, the company had not introduced a consumer-targeted computer since 1992. Hoping that its stylish new iMac would propel Apple back into this vast segment of the market, Apple released its ‘‘iMac’’ campaign.
The $100 million campaign, created by the ad agency TBWA\Chiat\Day, debuted on August 16, 1998. Its advertisements featured brightly hued computers against a plain white background, thereby further emphasizing the iMac’s one-of-a-kind colorful shell, and contained snappy copy that underscored either the iMac’s aesthetics or its user-friendliness. The campaign, which consisted of network and national cable television commercials (as well as spot television marketing in Apple’s top 10 markets), magazine, billboard, and bus ads, and radio spots, was the largest marketing effort in Apple’s history. But despite the high stakes involved for the company, the ‘‘iMac’’ campaign delivered its message in a ‘‘fun and factual’’ way, an Apple spokesperson stated in the August 14, 1998, San Francisco Chronicle. The ads highlighted the iMac’s easy Internet access, its simplicity (especially when compared to rival PCs), and its speed. Central to each ad was the iMac’s unique design. ‘‘Chic, not geek,’’ proclaimed one, while another simply said, ‘‘iCandy.’’
The iMac’s debut was triumphant, and 1998 proved to be Apple’s first profitable year since 1995. Many industry analysts credited the iMac as the primary force behind this turnaround. ‘‘A year and a half ago, Apple had no future; now it does,’’ proclaimed Fortune. Consumer surveys revealed that a substantial percentage of iMac purchasers were first-time Apple buyers, which indicated that the ‘‘iMac’’ campaign had succeeded in its goal of winning over new computer buyers and PC converts.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Founded in 1977, Apple had fallen on hard times by the mid-1990s. The company had made history in 1984 when it introduced the Macintosh, a machine that revolutionized the computer world with its graphical screen displays, pull-down menus, and other user-friendly features. While International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) licensed its operating system and other technologies, thereby launching an armada of inexpensive PC clones, Apple instead honed its image as the purveyor of ‘‘machine[s] for free-thinking, discriminating nonconformists and rebels,’’ according to Macworld. Apple consistently touted the fact that its computers, unlike those of its rivals, were simple to use. The introduction of Microsoft’s Windows operating system in the early 1990s undermined the force of these claims, however, as Windows provided similar graphical features and screen windows. A proliferation of similar products confused customers at the same time that Apple’s imagemaking efforts devolved into chaos. By 1996, 25 separate Apple campaigns were running simultaneously. As the company’s market share plummeted precipitously—from a high of around 14 percent in 1993 to a paltry 3 percent in 1997—software writers threatened to stop creating programs for the Apple operating system, claiming there was no profit to be made. Consumers began to doubt that Apple would survive and were reluctant to spend thousands of dollars on a machine that might quickly become a dinosaur. ‘‘This company was in a death spiral,’’ an Apple executive told Newsweek.
Steve Jobs, one of Apple’s founders, returned to the company as interim CEO in 1997 and quickly strove to right the troubled company. After trimming the product line to two broad categories—home and business—Jobs vowed to focus the ‘‘home’’ line on Apple’s key markets of consumers and school users. At the same time Jobs oversaw the creation of 1997’s ‘‘Think Different’’ advertising campaign, a high-profile effort designed to reassert that Apple, though plagued by bad press and sinking profits, was a vibrant company producing innovative products for innovative people. Jobs’ strategy halted the company’s free fall, and in April 1998 Apple reported its second straight profitable quarter. The company still needed to prove that it could compete for the consumer market with rival PC makers such as Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, and Dell. While Apple retained ‘‘Think Different’’ as an overarching branding campaign, it needed advertisements to herald the arrival of its newest machine, the iMac.

TARGET MARKET
Apple wanted to market the iMac predominantly to three groups: loyal Apple users, first-time computer buyers, and PC owners. As the company had not introduced a new consumer product since 1992, it hoped that many Apple users would choose to upgrade to the iMac. The company had long cultivated a rebellious image, with advertisements ranging from the famous ‘‘1984’’ commercial to the stark ‘‘Think Different’’ photos of maverick geniuses who had flouted conventional wisdom to make stunning contributions. As a result Apple buyers tended to be those who perceived themselves to be somewhat outside the mainstream and who valued creativity. Advertisements for the iMac were crafted to reach this group as well. The print ads used arty photos of the iMac that made the computer look less like a machine and more like a museum piece. The taglines in some of the print pieces also followed the Apple advertising formula. For instance, ‘‘I think therefore iMac,’’ punned on Descartes’ famous maxim, and understanding the reference required a degree of intellectual literacy. Moreover, the quirky, insider-type wit was likely to appeal to the alternative audience comprising the bulk of Apple loyalists.
Reaching first-time computer buyers presented an entirely different set of challenges. An industry analyst estimated that 5 million to 10 million consumers were ready to buy their first computer. According to an Apple news release this analyst concluded that ‘‘access to the Internet is a leading reason for consumers to buy a personal computer.’’ The technological world was often overwhelming to the uninitiated, though, with its talk of RAM, gigabytes, and modem speed. The ‘‘iMac’’ campaign sought to allay these consumers’ fears. One print ad suggested that the most complicated aspect of buying an iMac was deciding which color to purchase. ‘‘The thrill of surfing. The agony of choosing,’’ the piece quipped. ‘‘Buying a computer used to be a decision based on processor power, functions, and software packages,’’ said the Austin American-Statesman. ‘‘iMac has changed things because it is now about choosing between strawberry and grape.’’ Other print ads—‘‘Yum’’ and ‘‘iCandy’’—likened the machine to a sweet treat, further demystifying it. The television commercials, such as ‘‘Simplicity Shootout,’’ also emphasized the iMac’s user-friendliness by juxtaposing Apple’s easy setup and Internet access with the hassle of trying to use a Windows-based PC for the first time. Commercials featuring the actor Jeff Goldblum validated the insecurities of the Internet ‘‘newbie.’’ ‘‘It seems a big party is going on these days,’’ Goldblum said to the camera, referring to the Internet. ‘‘[But] I don’t have an e-mail.’’ He then proceeded to explain how easy it was to get on the Internet with the iMac.
The third group Apple strove to target with the ‘‘iMac’’ campaign was consumers using other PCs. Many analysts doubted that Apple could entice an appreciable number of Windows aficionados to purchase the iMac as their next computer, according to Tulsa World. Apple believed it could. To do so, the company hammered home the message that the iMac was faster, simpler, and equally as affordable as comparable PCs. The ‘‘iMac’’ campaign conveyed that ‘‘[w]e have a better product,’’ an Apple executive told Advertising Age. Apple also used the iMac’s style as an important selling point. One particular print ad (that humorously declared, ‘‘Sorry, no beige’’ above a turquoise iMac) embodied an underlying premise of the ‘‘iMac’’ campaign:
‘‘people [would] be able to further express themselves through their computers,’’ as an Apple spokesperson told the Austin American-Statesman.

COMPETITION
The magnitude of Apple’s goal of convincing first-time computer buyers and PC owners to consider the iMac was mammoth. According to Investor’s Business Daily, 85 percent of the desktop-computer market consisted of Windows-based PCs. The leading computer manufacturer was Compaq, which in 1994 overtook IBM to become the market leader. Compaq was no stranger to consumer-oriented advertising campaigns. In 1995 Compaq debuted ‘‘Has It Changed Your Life Yet?,’’ which was created by the ad agency Ammirati Puris Lintas. The commercials were intended to show how Compaq PCs ‘‘change[d] . . . lives in small but important ways for the better,’’ an Ammirati spokesperson told Marketing Computers. One spot showed a delighted child receiving a Compaq for Christmas. In 1998 Compaq doubled its ad spending for its Presario computer, which was its primary consumer-oriented machine. In February 1999 Compaq inaugurated a worldwide branding campaign. As of October 1998 Compaq maintained a 13.7 percent share of the worldwide computer market. IBM devoted a massive advertising budget to reaching home-computer users. In the early 1990s IBM came under attack for being an unwieldy behemoth in the increasingly nimble computer industry. In an effort to revamp its image IBM began its ‘‘Solutions for a Small Planet’’ campaign in 1995. Although many of these Ogilvy & Mather spots directly addressed businesses, the overall goal of the campaign was to bolster the IBM brand. In February 1998 IBMspecifically sought to reach consumers when it spent $50million on an Olympics ad campaign. The print ads and television spots celebrated little-known athletes whose personal accomplishments embodied the spirit of the Olympic Games. As Advertising Age explained, IBM planned to ‘‘make viewers feel better about IBM and better about IBM technology.’’ In addition to airing the campaign during Olympics broadcasts on CBS and TNT, print pieces appeared in Sports Illustrated, Time, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. IBM had an 8.6 percent share of the market in October 1998.
Another rival, Hewlett-Packard, teamed up with agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in 1997 to produce ‘‘Expanding Possibilities,’’ a $40 million consumer campaign. Other competitors, such as Microsoft, Intel, and Dell, also engaged in brand-building campaigns during the period.

MARKETING STRATEGY
To reach the diverse audience comprising its three target markets, Apple unleashed the ‘‘iMac’’ campaign with a media blitz. ‘‘It is easily our most far-reaching, coordinated use of the media,’’ a company spokesperson told the San Francisco Chronicle. Television commercials played a central role in communicating the campaign’s message to a vast number of consumers. While many rival computer companies focused heavily on trade publications, Apple aggressively pursued consumers where they lived. ‘‘Determining the media mix was complicated,’’ an Apple executive told Editor & Publisher. ‘‘iMac is targeted toward a variety of different markets, [and buyers] don’t necessarily need to be technologically savvy.’’ After the campaign’s launch on The Wonderful World of Disney, iMac spots aired on popular network shows that garnered a mainstream audience, such as Home Improvement, Spin City, Just Shoot Me, Friends, and 20/20. Apple also used national cable channels, such as Comedy Central, FX, and MSNBC. To ensure that its base of Apple users knew of the iMac and its updated features, the company also bought local air time in its top 10 markets: Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Minneapolis, and Denver.
The television commercials relied on humor to convey the iMac’s qualities. A spot called ‘‘Simplicity Shootout’’ featured ‘‘Adam Taggert, 26, Brown University graduate, Class of 1994’’ competing against a 7-year-old boy and his dog in a duel to set up their respective new computers. Taggert, who had selected a PC, fumbled with cables and manuals for quite a while, while the youngster had his iMac up and running in five minutes. Later television spots portrayed actor Jeff Goldblum (who had provided the voice-over on earlier iMac commercials) talking frankly and calmly about the iMac. Still others concentrated on the visual vividness of the machine. In January 1999, after Apple launched five additional iMac colors (tangerine, lime, strawberry, blueberry, and grape), TBWA\Chiat\Day created a commercial that pictured the five bright iMacs spinning artfully to the Rolling Stones’ song ‘‘She’s a Rainbow.’’ Apple used other media as well. The colorful print ‘‘iMac’’ pieces were published in a number of consumer magazines, including ESPN, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Wired, Vanity Fair, Elle, and Metropolitan Home. Moreover, the company engaged in a major saturation effort in its top 10 markets. Billboard versions of the ads (showing the iMac and containing a single tagline, such as ‘‘Mental Floss’’), bus ads, and radio spots all played an important role. Apple also broadcast ‘‘countdown to iMac’’ radio pieces in these markets during the days prior to the iMac’s introduction. In addition, it sponsored radio promotions in which an iMac was given away every day. The company even went so far as to install 20-foot inflatable iMacs atop some computer stores. ‘‘Apple is acting more like a package[d]-good marketer than a technology company,’’ exclaimed Advertising Age. An analyst for the magazine concurred: ‘‘They’re creating an environment in which an awful lot of potential consumers are paying attention to them.’’ Maintaining such a high profile was essential not only for Apple to sell more iMacs, but also ‘‘to reestablish the company’s credibility,’’ according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

AN INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN
The ‘‘iMac’’ campaign was truly a global marketing effort. Half of the $100 million ad budget was used in the United States, but the remaining sum brought the message of the iMac’s simplicity to Europe, Japan, and other international markets. The campaign was released in these regions on August 29, 1998.

OUTCOME
Despite a blockbuster launch of the iMac, many commentators predicted that the quirky machine would not convert PC users or lure first-time buyers. They were wrong. In its first weekend the iMac generated $25 million in sales. ‘‘It was the best-selling computer we ever had in a single day,’’ a representative from CompUSA proclaimed to the New York Daily News. Nor was this a flash in the pan. At the close of 1998 Apple announced $309 million in profits, of which ‘‘sales of the iMac accounted for a good portion,’’ said the San Jose Mercury News. The company’s stock prices shot up, as did its market share, which reached 5 percent in October 1998. The following month the iMac was the best-selling desktop computer in the United States. And, as the San Jose Mercury News noted, the iMac ‘‘wooed not only Mac faithfuls but also first-time buyers and veteran users of other systems who were new to Mac.’’ A consumer survey reported in Newsbytes News Network revealed that an estimated 40 percent of iMac buyers were new Apple buyers. Apple remained committed to growth in the consumer sector. ‘‘Apple’s future is in the consumer market,’’ an ebullient Jobs told Fortune. In July 1999 the company debuted the iBook, a portable computer designed for consumer use. This laptop, like the iMac, featured bright colors and a unique design. Even though the campaign’s exposure waned after 2000, the ‘‘iMac’’ campaign did not officially end until Apple released its 2002 ‘‘Switchers’’ campaign, which featured real-life people whose lives were improved after they switched to Apple computers.