Watch the video above or read below.

Stephen and Matt look back at one of Apple’s first advertising blunders.

Stephen Semple: There are two commercials we’re going to watch, and the first one we’re going to watch is the really famous Apple 1984 commercial which launched the Macintosh, and was hugely successful. We’re not going to spend a lot of time decoding that ad. If you want to learn a lot more about that, we did a whole episode over in the Empire Builders Podcast. Go over and check out episode 71, and you’ll learn all the details of how successful that campaign was, how it came about to be, and whatnot.

But here’s the interesting thing. Along comes 1985, Jobs is gone, Sculley is running the joint, and they create an ad, Lemmings, that they run at the Super Bowl, and it has a similar sound, similar shooting, same announcer, similar ending to it, and it bombs. So what we’re going to do is watch those two commercials, and then Matthew, I’m going to ask you, “Why did Lemmings bomb when 1984 blew the doors off? What’s the difference between the two?” So let’s have people watch these two ads.

Matthew Burns: All right.

 

Stephen Semple: Now, Lemmings. A year later, the same idea was shown at the Super Bowl, just like 1984 was shown in the Super Bowl. Shown at the Super Bowl, crickets.

 

Stephen Semple: So what do you think?

Matthew Burns: I don’t even know what to say. You know what? I remember the ad. And yeah, you’re right, similar tonality, the feel between the two ads is similar. It’s the same as far as styling, visuals, creativity, and the idea of the oppressed being liberated. But your question to me is what’s different?

Stephen Semple: What’s different? Why did Lemmings fail? I believe there are two reasons behind it. I’ll give you the first one. The first one is that 1984 worked really, really well. And we’ve talked about this, now we’re talking about it for the third time, which is a little bit of a mystery.

So when you go to do something the second time, you can’t rely on mystery to carry you through the story because people, “Oh, that’s an Apple commercial.” As soon as it starts, “That’s an Apple commercial.”

Matthew Burns: Very fair.

Stephen Semple: Where 1984 was, “What is this advertising?” Now that’s not a failure. That’s not why it failed, although it contributed to it not being as powerful because all of a sudden the mystery is gone. It’s very hard to run the trick a second time. If you’re running the trick a second time, you have to set up a different mystery. You have to do it so differently that it’s now still mysterious.

Matthew Burns: That’s right.

Stephen Semple: So they didn’t understand the power of mystery when they redid this, and that they didn’t have that going for them. But that’s not the biggest reason why it failed.

Matthew Burns: Okay, so as a visual communicator for most of my career, my initial gut feeling is that there’s a failure and a difference with the way in which the two ads transformed. [Stephen nods] Oh, yeah? All right, well this is…

Stephen Semple: Yeah, carry on that thought.

Matthew Burns: So when you look at all of the oppressed, so not the guards running in 1984, not the hammer thrower, but all the audience that is being mesmerized by Big Brother, there are faces through the whole ad, just zombies doing zombie movements.

And then the hammer blows up the screen and the dust is flying and all of a sudden they’re like [stunned facial expression]… And they’re big and they transformed and they’ve been enlightened and they’ve been freed.

And in the second ad, even the one individual who understood the message or heard the message at all, or who kind of was weirded out by the fact that he was about to fall off a cliff, even he didn’t get elated or get a reaction or do anything different. In the end, his eyes opened up. Yes, there was a little bit of color, but there was no transformation.

Stephen Semple: Bingo, there was no hope, no transformation. And this is the reason why when advertisers see an ad out there and then they try to replicate the ad, and then they don’t have success in it, it’s often because what they don’t actually understand is what was so powerful in the ad.

The 1984 ad was powerful for two reasons. One, it had the mystery, but two, it had hope and transformation. And where that transformation was going to come from is this product called the Apple Macintosh.

Matthew Burns: Right.

Stephen Semple: Lemmings had no hope. Everybody kept just going off the cliff. So there was no hope, there was no transformation. And that’s the difference between those two ads.

Matthew Burns: We’ve talked about it already. The other thing that I don’t think that it had was there was no shared experience as well. They were trying to do shared experiences by having people being humdrum and going to work and doing the same thing every day. But that’s not a positive shared experience. It’s not something to look forward to. That’s not the hope strategy that we’re talking about.

But in 1984, it was directly connected to a fantastically popular, everybody had to read it in high school..

Stephen Semple: And it was the Cold War and there was a real fear about this whole Big Brother thing. So that was in the psyche of the population at the time.

Matthew Burns: And they had no control over their situation, where people just going to work have control over the situation, they’re just choosing not to… Now you’re just making the audience feel stupid. Where the other one, they were actually being oppressed, and they were released from oppression by having this awesome new thing.

Stephen Semple: Right. You weren’t insulting your customer.

Matthew Burns: Just like, “Hey dummies, why aren’t you using our computer yet?” Right?

Stephen Semple: Right. But it would be so easy. I can see how that happens. You go out there and you’re looking around, you see an ad that works and you go, “Great. I’m going to take that and I’m going to repurpose that idea for my product.” And it fails. And you go, “I don’t understand. It’s the same announcer. It’s shot in a similar way and it’s a similar thing.” Except, you’re missing the actual key ingredient, hope, and transformation, that made the whole thing work.

Matthew Burns: Yes, yes.

Stephen Semple: And why somebody then wanted this. I want this because I want a better future. The Lemmings were, “Oh, I don’t want to go off a cliff.”

Matthew Burns: That’s right.

Stephen Semple: Okay great, I get you don’t want to go off cliff. But that’s not a positive. That’s the avoidance of a negative. Avoidance of a negative is never as strong as driving somebody to a positive.

Matthew Burns: Thank you. Wrong emotion.

Stephen Semple: Wrong emotion.

Matthew Burns: Wrong emotion. Like all day long, wrong emotion.

Stephen Semple: And when we look at storytelling in advertising, we’ve got to start with, “What is the emotional?” And you and I have worked on it, a ton of ads together.

Matthew Burns: Right.

Stephen Semple: We always start with, “What is the emotional construct that we want the person to feel?” What is the emotion that we want that consumer to feel about us, about our product, about the moment, whatever that is? And then what you have to do is create the ads to that emotion.

The place is fun, and that has to feel fun. The place is serious, that has to feel serious. But whatever that emotion that we want the customer to feel, that’s what we’ve got to tap into. Look, when in doubt, hope and transformation always work.

Matthew Burns: Thank you.

Stephen Semple: Transformation always works.

Matthew Burns: Thank you.

Stephen Semple: So when in doubt, “Geez, I’m not sure what we should do here,” go to that one. Here’s how the customer is before, here’s how the customer is after. How do we take it through the arc and show that our product is the medium, make that happen. That one always works.

Matthew Burns: Absolutely.

Stephen Semple: Always works.

Matthew Burns: It’s probably 50% or more of what we write. I mean, it’s where it lands because it works. It works. And with the customer’s story, and it has to be authentic to them, that had to be my favorite part of this. And thank you for doing this. You put me on the spot and I don’t like being uncomfortable, so we’ll talk about that after we’re off-camera.

But my favorite part of that is that it has to be on brand. And what they tried to do is they tried to duplicate Steve Jobs’ authenticity.

Stephen Semple: Yes.

Matthew Burns: And he was gone.

Stephen Semple: And I also don’t think Ridley Scott produced the second one, where Ridley Scott produced the first one, and last I checked, Ridley Scott knows a little thing or two, if you don’t know the name Ridley Scott, Google it.

Matthew Burns: Take a look, you under-rock sleeper. Yeah, a hundred percent. That authenticity, when we do things for our clients, is based on who they are, what they stand for, and what they stand against. And if you’re not authentic to the brand, then it just comes off as hokey.

Stephen Semple: Well, Jobs definitely believed that the personal computer was a device that was going to lead to a better future. He had that belief, Bill Gates has that belief, so there is that authenticity for sure.

But I caution people, and we see this happen all the time. People will call us up and go, “Oh, you guys wrote this ad. I want one like that for me.” And there’ll be often a couple of reasons why it won’t work. It’s like, “Well that won’t work for you because you’re not the same as them. And not only that, here’s the element that is missing. You can’t just lift that stuff and rewrite it.”

Again, what it is all about is dial in that feeling that you want people to feel, and create the story, the messaging. And if it’s transformation, it’s always a story because there’s the beginning and an end, right?

Matthew Burns: Right.

Stephen Semple: And that’s the key.

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