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LEE CLOW: THE MAN WHO LAUNCHED APPLE
4 lessons on marketing from the man who launched Apple's Macintosh...
Niall Ratcliffe
July 14, 2024
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Morning!
This is article number 156 of Growing Viral. That means today is officially the 3 year anniversary of GV.
That’s 156 Sundays in a row that I’ve sent this. Pretty crazy.
So thanks for tuning in every week and reading these. It’s crazy to me that you and 3500 other people actually care to open these.
Hopefully, you’ll stick around for the next 3 years :)
Here’s what you’ll learn today:
The mastermind that launched Apple
The reasons why his campaigns work
The key lessons we can learn from him
Should take 4 mins to read.
P.S. Don’t forget to check out the audio version below!
LISTEN TO THE AUDIO VERSION
BREAKING DOWN THE STRATEGY
On April 1st 1976, Apple Computers hit the market for the first time with the ‘Apple I microcomputer’.
Never heard of it?
Yeah… me neither.
But we aren’t alone, because that first Apple product was not a huge hit. Don’t get me wrong, they sold a few and it kept the lights on. But it certainly didn’t make them the tech giant they are today.
Then in 1983, they created the Macintosh (now that is more familiar).
It was a great product, but if it was going to have the impact they wanted - they needed to launch it right.
So John Sculley (CEO of Apple at the time) turned to infamous advertiser Lee Clow to help them launch it.
But the task they brought to Clow wasn’t an easy one.
They wanted a campaign that shook the industry.
They wanted it to be an attack on all other computer companies.
And of course, they wanted it to sell a sh*t tonne of computers.
This is what Clow came back to them with…
An ad that played on George Orwell’s 1984 while teasing the launch of Apple’s Macintosh.
Clow ticked all of the boxes.
$3.5 million worth of Macintoshes sold just after the advertisement ran.
(Equivalent to $10,000,000 today.)
It was this campaign that launched Apple onto the scene and built the foundations for the company we know today.
This ad put them on the map.
For Clow, this is one of many of his infamous ad campaigns.
I spent the last 3 hours studying his work, his most famous campaigns, and their impact.
Here are 4 of his most famous campaigns + the marketing lessons we can learn from them:
Campaign 1: 1984
Let’s start with this 1984 ad. Because while it was clearly a very successful ad for Apple, there are 2 other aspects that make it so special.
Firstly, it was one of the first high-production Super Bowl ads ever. Most people in the industry credit it as the ad that kickstarted the whole Super Bowl halftime ad frenzy.
The second thing is that ads didn’t look like this prior. It feels like something out of a film, a short snippet of a story - not an ad.
Combine these 2 things and you realise just how revolutionary it was.
A high-production movie-style ad, that was pulled off as the first-ever successful Super Bowl ad.
(They even brought in the director of Blade Runner to help create the ad.)
But I’m not telling you this to give you the history of the 1984 ad. I’m highlighting it to show you 2 of the key principles that Clow lives by when it comes to marketing:
1/ Create A Spectacle
Most advertising is very obviously just selling a product. It shows the product being used by a happy customer, then cuts to a sale.
The 1984 ad does none of that.
It’s intense. It has tension. It has characters.
It is literally like the ending of a film and just like the ending of a film, it hooks people in.
It’s a spectacle and people remember spectacles.
You can probably guess which Super Bowl ad everyone was talking about on the Monday after this aired!
Hint: Not the one with the smiling customer
2/ Make It More Than Just Advertising
The 1984 ad isn’t about Apple. It isn’t about the Macintosh. It isn’t about selling products.
It’s about democratising technology. Not letting IBM (who were the main players at the time) control all computers.
It was about something more, something people can get behind - and that’s one of the many reasons that it resonated with so many people.
It gave them something to think about, not just a product to buy.
Campaign 2: Think Different
If you want to build a cult, sell a manifesto. If you want to sell products, build a cult.
On a podcast with Simon Sinek, Clow explained that his most successful ads always pushed a manifesto.
The perfect example of that is the “Think Different” campaign he worked on for Apple.
The campaign was simple. It showed famous people (or thinkers) with 2 words next to them “Think Different” - accompanied by an Apple logo.
Again, the campaign didn’t:
Show Apple products
Push people to purchase
Tell them how they could buy
It simply pushed them to do 1 thing → Think differently.
But while the campaign didn’t directly sell products, what it did was create this cult identity for people who purchased Apple products.
They weren’t just people who liked Apple, they were people who “Think differently”.
People whose identity was now tied to a brand. Apple was no longer a product, it was a part of their personality.
This campaign is a huge reason why Apple has such a cult following to this day.
Campaign 3: Dogs Rule
Marketers love to try too hard.
Mainly because we think we need to be these fantastic “creative people” who come up with great ideas.
But Clow made me realise just how little you need to create sometimes.
Instead of creating crazy narratives around products, Clow prefers to build narratives around real experiences.
The perfect example of this in action is his Pedigree “Dogs Rule” commercial:
Rather than creating a crazy campaign that claimed Pedigree was healthier than all the other dog foods, they just created a narrative around real pet owner experiences.
The ad is literally just a compilation of dogs living their lives.
With one simple phrase being repeated by the narrator “We are for dogs.”
Quite like the “Think Different” campaign, it wasn’t just about selling dog food, it was about advocating for dogs and their needs.
And who better to buy your dog food from than someone who loves dogs?
Campaign 4: Energizer Bunny
A common theme with Clow’s marketing that you should have realised by now is that he’s always driving home 1 simple thing for the audience to remember.
1984 ad: He drives home that change is needed in the computing space.
Think Different: The idea to obviously “Think Different”.
Dogs Rule: The fact that Pedigree is “For The Dogs”
It’s a simple message for customers to absorb.
And he did this masterfully again with his Energizer Bunny campaign. This time using a brand mascot to drive it home.
In a market flooded with straightforward product demos, the Energizer Bunny created a character that didn’t directly sell the product but embodied its most important feature – longevity.
It drilled home one simple message in the viewer’s mind - Energizer batteries last.
And that is probably the biggest lesson you can take away from Clow. That no matter what type of ad you are creating, always create it with one objective:
→ To leave one simple message in the viewer’s mind
More often than not, that message needs to be a reminder of your product’s most important feature.
🌱 THE GREENHOUSE
Things I’ve saved this week that are worth seeing:
TL;DR
Lesson 1: Create A Spectacle
Lesson 2: Make It More Than An Ad
Lesson 3: Advocate For Your Customers
Lesson 4: Give Them 1 Message To Remember
Marketing is a funny industry.
Because most of the time, geniuses like Clow, really don’t get the attention they deserve.
I’d never heard of Clow before this week, yet he pioneered some of the biggest ads to ever air - pretty spectacular.
Hopefully, after this, you know a little bit more about Clow and have learned some great marketing lessons from him.
If you did learn something, why not share this with a friend? I appreciate it! :)
Until next Sunday.
— Niall
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