On a summer day in 1997, Lee Clow, the global creative director of ad firm Chiat/Day, was driving when he received a call on his car phone.
The voice on the other end said “Guess what? Amelio just resigned and I’m going to be CEO at Apple. Can you come up and help me?”
Steve Jobs, the voice on the other end, had just returned as interim CEO of Apple. At the time, Apple was struggling mightily in a business that was dominated by Windows based PCs.
By the summer of 1997, Apple was 90 days away from running out of cash; except for the education market, everyone was shunning Apple computers.
The press was openly suggesting that buying an Apple computer was less than a smart move.
In this dire situation, Jobs reached out to Lee Clow for help with marketing.
So on August 11th, 1997, Clow and his team, which included a young, up and coming creative director named Rob Siltanen, walked into a large conference room at Apple.
Jobs and his team arrived a few minutes later. He wasted no time and decided to get straight to the point -- Apple was in a lot of trouble. He wanted “no TV ads, just some print ads in the computer magazines until we get things figured out.”
Chiat/Day’s Siltanen snapped back: “Half the world thinks Apple is going to die. A few print ads in the computer magazines aren’t going to do anything for you. You need to show the world that Apple is as strong as a lion. Nobody stands around the water cooler talking about print ads. You need to do something bigger and bolder. You need to do TV and other things that are going to give you true momentum.”
Jobs was skeptical, but he asked them to come up with ideas. They agreed to meet again.
Siltanen flew back to the LA office of Chiat/Day and got the entire LA team working on ideas.
A week later everyone gathered in a large conference room to review the various concepts. The walls of the room were covered in campaign ideas.
One concept stood out -- it was conceived by Craig Tanimoto, the LA office’s brilliant art director. It consisted of black and white photos of famous legends such as Edison, Einstein and Gandhi with the caption: Think Different.
Siltanen recalled that moment years later: “The rainbow-colored (Apple) logo served as stark contrast to the black and white photography, and, to me, it seemed to make the “Think Different” statement all the more bold. It was the exact kind of attention-getting and thought-provoking advertising Apple desperately needed. Clow loved the idea as well, and we directed everyone in the room to start blowing it out in TV and other media.”
Siltanen began working on the copy that would accompany the TV ads. He focused on the images of the visionaries and came up with the following first draft, entitled ‘crazy ones’:
“To the crazy ones.
Here’s to the misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.
Here’s to the ones who see the world differently.
They’re the ones who invent and imagine and create.
They’re the ones who push the human race forward.
While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to believe they can change the world are the ones who actually do.
FADE TO APPLE LOGO AND LINE “Think different.”
Siltanen was pleased with the beginning and the closing, but the middle needed more adjustments. Siltanen ploughed on but he had to turn his attention to other clients and asked Clow about bringing in additional talent to finish the copy.
Clow hired a brilliant writer named Ken Segall who had worked with Jobs in the past.
Segall came up with various other scripts. One day he came into Siltanen’s office and said, “Jobs has seen a ton of scripts, and he’s gone full circle …we’re moving ahead with your ‘Crazy Ones’ script. I made some tweaks. I hope you don’t mind.”
Segall made Siltanen’s great copy even better. The result was the final draft below:
"Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do."
Jobs even collaborated on the final version of the “Think Different” campaign.
“Think Different” made an instant impression on people. It immediately made the public reconsider Apple and generated buzz around the brand.
The campaign won several awards including an Emmy, the Clio, and the Grand Effie award.
“Think Different” successfully repositioned the Apple brand from something to be avoided to an aspirational one -- a brand associated with the most brilliant and creative thinkers of the world.
As Lee Clow later recalled, the campaign dedicated Apple to “the creative thinkers in our society. It’s a beautiful and wonderful and special niche because if you can own that, who wouldn’t want to see themselves as a creative thinker as opposed to just a worker.”
Apple would go on to dominate the ‘creative thinkers’ niche over the next two decades through masterful product innovation, powerful advertising and a seamless distribution system.
It surpassed rivals in the computer, mobile and the music industries.