Why Apple's famous Super Bowl ad almost didn't see the light of day

The Super Bowl is viewed by so many people that any company that wants to have its name on the tip of everyone's tongue Monday morning needs to spend the money to buy an ad. According to NBC News, three companies that you might have noticed advertising during the big game were topping the App Store download chart on Monday. The three firms include Paramount+, Copilot, and Temu. Those were the top three free apps downloaded on the App Store Monday proving how exposure during the Super Bowl can mean a great deal to a firm.

Not only did video streamer Paramount+ stream the Super Bowl, it also advertised during the game. Temu is an e-commerce marketplace that is known for its incredibly low prices and constant price discounting games. And Copilot is Microsoft's AI chatbot. Temu advertised on the Super Bowl last year, but this year the Chinese-operated company ran the same ad four different times. The ads contained the app's "Shop like a billionaire" slogan and offered consumers $15 million in giveaways.

And speaking of Super Bowl ads, the one that is considered to be the best one of all time is the iconic 60-second spot created by Apple to announce the new Macintosh computer back in 1984. The ad shows a dystopian society with similar-looking men walking in what appears to be a tunnel reminiscent of something you'd see in a gerbil cage. These men have no expressions and have the appearance of being beaten down by "the man."

Suddenly, we see a young woman wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and running shorts. She carries a big hammer in her hands and we can see that she is being chased by helmeted police wearing face masks. The woman runs into a room full of men all watching some sort of propaganda on a huge screen. The woman spins to get momentum and then hurls the hammer into the screen which explodes into white light. And the words on the screen match what the voice-over announcer is saying: "On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984."

Apple was, of course, referencing the book "1984" by George Orwell which is a cautionary tale about what could happen when government gets too much control. The ad, which never showed the product it advertised, had people talking about Apple and the Macintosh computer for weeks after the game which means that it was a huge success.

Per CNN, the ad almost didn't get shown during the Super Bowl. Apple's Board of Directors was not happy with it. Lee Clow, an ad executive who was one of the creators of the spot, said, "Everyone loved it until we showed it to the board." Apple's board was not happy that the Macintosh was not seen in the ad although Steve Jobs loved it. "Steve demanded, 'I want something that will stop the world to introduce Macintosh,'" Clow said. "We came up with bravest thing we could come up with."

The ad agency and Jobs had to scramble to get the ad shown at all against the objections of Jobs' own hand-picked CEO John Sculley. Apple's board and Sculley wanted Apple to sell the Super Bowl airtime it purchased. Clow remembered that "We kind of conspired to not sell [the already purchased air time] so we could run it one time. We got a pretty big impact just running it once."

That's a huge understatement and Marcus Collins, professor of marketing at the University of Michigan, says, "In my opinion it’s the best ad ever made. It's about the magnification of the brand’s beliefs. It has become the gold standard of what marketing communications should be about. Advertising is about getting people's attention. It was only shown once but we're talking about it 40 years later because of its impact and cultural resonance." The ad also made other companies realize that when it comes to the Super Bowl, their ads have to be over the top to get noticed.

As for Apple, the ad marked a short term peak as Sculley fired Steve Jobs in 1985 when sales of the Macintosh and the Lisa failed to gain traction. Jobs went on to run Pixar leading to its sale to Disney, and he also created a new firm called NeXT Computers. Apple bought NeXT in 1996 bringing Jobs back into the fold as an advisor. He soon worked his way back to CEO and launched a series of incredibly successful products including the translucent iMac G3, the G4, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad before succumbing to pancreatic cancer in 2011.