Amy Schneider
Grogan 1020
9/22/2011
Project 1
APPLE COMMERCIALS
"The past was dead, the future was unimaginable."( George Orwell - Harcourt Brace Jovanovich - 1984 ) This quote is from 1984, the book that depicted how 1984 was going to be. Until January 24, 1984 it was, or at least that’s what the Apple Corporation thought. During Super Bowl XVIII, Apple aired a commercial to advertise its new product, the first Macintosh, which included the reference to 1984. The mac was different from the pc. Mac wasn't just a business computer, it was something completely different. The mac runs with different software than a pc. The commercial from Apple proved that their product was unimaginable compared to the past. We see this same idea in Apple commercials made in 1984 as in the ones made now. All of the commercials use the same ethos, pathos, and logos as they did back in 1984. Even though Apple markets the iPad, iPod, mac, and the iPhone, all of the commercials are the same in two ways; being different and youthful. With the use of Ethos in how society will look at you when you have an iPhone, pathos with how they advertise women and business men, and logos with how the products can do anything, Apple advertises their products very effectively.
Apple has always kept the idea that they are different and when you buy their products you will be youthful. Although they have the idea of their products being useful, they don't just target the young audience, they target all ages. We see this in the 1984 commercial when the young woman is running down the aisle she is destroying the screen controlling the bald white older men. This shows that apple will be better than the IBM and HP with the fact that it’s different, new, hip, and young. This was different compared to the business IBM commercial in 1984 of the business men in the office. Apple was diverse; they showed people that they weren't the stereotypical business man. That is still the same now-a-days when compared to the commercial from Verizon wireless android. The Verizon commercial is about a little girl who is running a lemonade stand which becomes a huge corporation just because she used an android. This isn't the approach apple makes. Apple, when advertising the iPhone 4, had a commercial entirely of games which diverges from the business scene.
This apple commercial of 1984 aired during the super bowl. The super bowl is the number one most watched event on television, so the idea was that they wanted everyone to know that on January 24th, 1984, Apple was releasing the Macintosh. This idea is logical. If you want to sell your product you should make sure that whatever you are selling is known. This commercial has logic in the advertisement itself. For example, the idea that the mac is different than any other computer on the planet is portrayed very well when the woman is running down the aisle in colorful clothes compared to all of the gray suits the men are wearing. This is logical in saying that Macs are different. The commercial also affects the emotions of people. The book 1984 is very scary and to think that we are in that state affects people. Another emotional aspect of this ad is the feminism. In the world of gray bald men a young beautiful woman comes down to break the mind control. This was a big deal for apple advertising because none of the IBM commercials prior to 1984 had women in them, they were all business men. If you are in a man’s world and see this strong woman destroy evil it has a lot more emotional value then just two business men in suites talking about computers. All of the examples previously mentioned demonstrates ethos as well. The idea that computers are just for business men was society’s main idea and then apple says this computer is going to be different and shows someone who is not a business man who goes against this ideology of computers being only for business.
Let’s take these ideas and look how apple kept them going through out their corporation today with the new Apple commercials for their products including the iPad, iPhone, and the Mac. The new mac commercials include an older and a younger man. The older man is a pc and the younger man is a Mac. The older man is dressed in a suit while the younger man is in hip clothing which shows that once again Mac is not like a PC. This commercial is still labeling pc as being all for business and the mac all for fun. This is logical when you want to say Macs are different than an HP, Dell, Toshiba, Samsung, and every other piece of technology not made by Apple. The commercials being made today show ethos in the same way as the older ones did. They have the idea that the Mac is younger and hip. When you’re in school and looking to get a laptop, you want to get one that is cool. That means that if cool costs the $1,000 your Aunt Jane gave you for your graduation, you bet it will be used to buy a Mac. This is just society’s way of making you cool. I personally need to have an iPhone even though Wayne State doesn't get Verizon or AT&T service anywhere. But none of that matters as long as I can play Angry Birds in my English class. That idea is placed into the heads of society with the use of Justin Long as the Mac guy as well as the way the iPhone commercials show all of the cool things that you can do like email. Many of the iPhone commercials do not have actors or famous people in them so conveying the ethos of being young and cool and done through the phone itself. The iPhone commercials show the audience what they can do with the iPhone and all of the amazing activities they show you probably aren’t what you would see your parents doing on their phones. Playing music, checking emails, watching movies are all things younger people would do, therefore using ethos. The iPad commercials show the exact same thing with the simplest words coming from the commercial, “If you don’t have an iPad…”.What will you be missing out on without an iPad? If you don’t have an iPad are you really that cool? These are the ethos that affects a lot of people.
When advertising Apple products they also use pathos. We see pathos in both the iPhone and the iPad commercials with the same affect. This product affects the emotional value of people who travel and who don’t get to see their kids very often and instead of talking to them on the phone they actually get to see their face with Facetime. In the commercial they advertise this feature and it really affects people’s emotions because this was an unheard of idea. In episode Bart of the Future, episode 17, season 11 of the Simpsons, the episode takes place in 2030 and the phones have Facetime. The future was supposed to have phone conversations where you could see the person you were talking to, but that has already happened. That’s very emotional to think that Apple has accomplished the future.
We see that the advertisement affects people but now we need to see why it is logical to choose this product and apple does it in all their commercials. The logos in the commercials were always the same idea and that idea is “think different”. The logos in the iPhone commercials are that Apple is better than any phone for the fact of they can search a sea food restaurant closest to your location. They can surf the web while you talk on your phone. This is logical because no one else offers this. So it is logical to buy the iPhone instead of the Blackberry. The same can be used for the iPad with Facetime, like I said before it was unheard of to see someone’s face while you talk on the phone so why not advertise that. It is logical to show that side of the product so people are interested in Apple being different and leaders in the future.
There were other Apple commercials that didn’t show some of the ideas that Apple had in other commercials, one being the Newton. Apples pre-iPad the newton came out in 1993 and was not successful on the market. When we look at the way they advertised the Newton we see a huge difference. In all the commercials of Apple they never include that they can do business but the Newton did. The commercial did include a little youth and fun at the beginning of the commercial but when it came down to the end, it explained that the Newton can talk to fax machines, phones, computers, and is great for the business types that want to look cool. So all though the commercial did advertise its coolness it was mainly about business. To say that is why the product failed is vague but it was one of the few products that Apple had that failed marketing wise.
When looking at all these commercials we see the underlining ideas in many ways. These ideas that show Apple is different. They are for people that aren’t just business people, that you can do so much more than a droid or even before a droid, and when you use these products you will be hip, young, and cool. With the use of Ethos in how society will look at you when you have an iPhone, pathos with how they advertise women and business men, and logos with how they can do anything be thinner, smaller, and faster so you should buy Apple. We see these ideas throughout the Apple timeline from the first mac all the way to the iPad two. Does this advertising strategy work? Do the apple commercials effect how people view the products? Well compared to the sales of Windows, Hp, and Dell, Apple stands out. Smart advertising with a product that thinks different but staying the same with advertising.
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