The making of 1984

It’s Superbowl week in America. This is the week where NFL fans and advertisers (the people who work in and around advertising) get all wiggly and giggly with anticipation. The game! The commercials! The episode of Glee afterwards. . . oh wait, that last one’s just me.

When it comes to Superbowl commercials, Apple’s iconic “1984″ commercial set the bar. Or as Steve Hayden said in his AdWeek piece about the spot, “[the commercial] established that venue as the platform for big, new branding campaigns from all sorts of advertisers—beer, cars, soft drinks, dot-coms, you name it.”

Hayden, who was a Senior VP and Creative Director at Chiat/Day in 1983 worked on the commercial. In the article he talks about the creative brief the agency was given, how close the commercial came to not even being made (twice), and the marketing campaign Jobs ordered after he first saw the commercial. It’s an interesting look not only into the advertising industry, but the making of an icon.

Here’s the commercial, in case you’ve never seen it (is that possible?)