Every Mac head and nearly anyone alive during Super Bowl Sunday in 1984 remembers the Macintosh commercial that sent shock waves across the United States. Ask many who remember that day who played that Super Bowl and nearly all will be unable to tell you it was the Raiders that killed the Redskins 38 to 9. Ask for details about the commercial and few will leave anything out. Ya, it was that powerful.

But guess what? It almost didn’t happen! Leave it up to board members (again) to just not see the significance in brilliance. Leave it up to the rich folks who play golf all day to be so disconnected from their customer that they nearly axed this brilliant advertisement from ever happening!

When the lights came back up after the spot played, the room on De Anza Boulevard was silent. Schlein (CEO of Macy’s California) was sitting with his head on the table. Markkula (Apple founder) stared in amazement. Murray (Apple’s Marketing Manager) thought Markkula was overcome by the wonderful commercial until he broke the silence to ask, “Who wants to move to find a new agency?” Sculley recalls, “The others just looked at each other, dazed expressions on their faces…Most of them felt it was the worst commercial they had ever seen. Not a single outside board member liked it.” [Source]

Thankfully the Woz gave it the push and “OK” it needed enough for Jobs to pull a “pass-the-buck” on the executive VP of marketing and sales and let him give the say to go for it or not. As you all well and know, the rest is history and the $1.6 million spent on the commercial and air time easily paid itself off as every network and news agency in the world basically aired the entire 90 second commercial for free for months after. The Mac became number, the IBM a business machine and ironically released the same day, the PCjr, a still-born product. Amazing, isn’t it?

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