Apple repositions itself with "Think different"
On 28 September 1997, Apple Computer broadcast a sixty-second television commercial across the United States during the network premiere of the 1995 film "Toy Story" on ABC.1, 2 The spot, titled "The Crazy Ones," paired a montage of black-and-white archival footage of figures including Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King Jr., Richard Branson, John Lennon, Buckminster Fuller, Thomas Edison, Muhammad Ali, Mahatma Gandhi, Amelia Earhart, Alfred Hitchcock, Martha Graham, Jim Henson, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Pablo Picasso with a voice-over narrated by Richard Dreyfuss.3 The closing line of the film, "Think different," was rendered on a white field beside the rainbow Apple logo. The campaign marked the moment at which Apple's brand position was formally restated after its near-collapse of the mid-1990s.
The creative team and the writing of "The Crazy Ones"
The campaign was developed at TBWA\Chiat\Day in Los Angeles.3 Lee Clow led the agency relationship.4 The slogan "Think different" was conceived by Craig Tanimoto, an art director at Chiat\Day, who proposed it as part of a wider conceptual brief responding to IBM's then-running "Think" advertising line.5 Rob Siltanen, then creative director at the agency, drafted the script of "The Crazy Ones" in July 1997, after a first meeting with Steve Jobs in Cupertino early that month, working on it non-stop day and night.4 Ken Segall, an account creative who later worked closely with Jobs on Apple naming, contributed to the writing.4 Although it has been widely assumed that Steve Jobs wrote the text personally, Siltanen has stated that he authored the script with Ken Segall and that Jobs initially expressed reservations about it before approving the final cut.4, 1
The television advertisement was directed by Jennifer Golub of Chiat\Day, who shared the art director credit with Jessica Schulman and Yvonne Smith.3 A version narrated by Steve Jobs himself was recorded but not used in the broadcast cut, with the Richard Dreyfuss version selected for release.3, 2
Context: Apple in 1997
The campaign followed Apple's acquisition of NeXT in December 1996, the return of Steve Jobs as interim chief executive in September 1997, and a financial crisis that had brought the company within months of insolvency.6, 1 Apple's product line had become diffuse, its market share had declined sharply, and its brand had lost the cultural distinctiveness it had established in the 1980s.6 Jobs's brief to TBWA\Chiat\Day was to develop a campaign that re-anchored Apple's brand without referring to specific products.5 The result was a positioning exercise rather than a product introduction, with the company itself, rather than the Macintosh or any peripheral, as the subject of the work.
The campaign in market
"The Crazy Ones" ran in cinema, television, and out-of-home formats. A print and outdoor extension featured single black-and-white portraits of the same figures alongside the line and the Apple logo.3 The portraits became one of the most reproduced advertising series of the late 1990s, appearing on billboards, bus shelters, and city wraps in Apple's principal markets. The rights to each likeness were secured individually, in some cases by Jobs personally calling the families, and every participant received money and Apple products to donate to causes of their choice.2, 3
Internally, Apple distributed copies of the film to its employees and used it to recover morale among a workforce that had been depleted by years of restructuring.7 Externally, the campaign re-established Apple as a brand of cultural ambition rather than as a struggling computer manufacturer.
Reception and legacy
The campaign received the Emmy Award for Outstanding Commercial in 1998 and the Grand Effie for the most effective campaign in America in 2000.3 It ran in various forms until 2002, when it was succeeded by the "Switch" campaign.6, 8 "Think different" remained one of the most discussed advertising platforms of the late twentieth century, and the slogan was used by Apple on packaging, product literature, and corporate communication for several years after the television advertising ceased.3
Within Apple's brand history, "Think different" performed two distinct functions. It restated the identity that had been established by "1984" and the early Macintosh marketing of the 1980s, and it provided the conceptual framework within which the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the company's subsequent product introductions were positioned. The campaign remains the reference point against which later Apple brand work is measured, and its phrase has continued to appear in Apple corporate communications, including during the company's fiftieth anniversary celebrations in 2026.9
Source: Harry Piotr Youtube
Written with AI assistance, edited by a human. Find out more about our Use of AI.
1. This Day in Tech History, Marcel Brown, "Apple Asks Us to Think Different", entry for 28 September 1997, page dated 28 September 2026, off whitelist and used for corroboration only, for the campaign's launch on 28 September 1997, "just over two weeks after Steve Jobs became interim CEO", which places his formal appointment in September 1997, and for the "Crazy Ones" prose having been written by Rob Siltanen and Ken Segall of TBWA/Chiat/Day, although it is commonly attributed to Steve Jobs. https://thisdayintechhistory.com/09/28/apple-asks-us-to-think-different/
2. CBS News, David Pogue, "Book excerpt: 'Apple: The First 50 Years' by David Pogue", 8 March 2026, added during the retrofit, off whitelist and used for corroboration only, for the debut of the ad on 28 September 1997, in the words of the excerpt "the "Think Different" ad debuted on ABC's The Wonderful World of Disney, which happened to be airing the network premiere of Toy Story"; for Jobs being torn "until the last moment" between the Richard Dreyfuss version and the one he narrated himself, and choosing Dreyfuss's with the words "If we go with mine, it'll become about me"; and for the people depicted, of whom "Every participant received money and Apple products to donate to their favorite causes". https://www.cbsnews.com/news/book-excerpt-apple-the-first-50-years-by-david-pogue/
3. Wikipedia, "Think different", read 2 October 2026, for the campaign having been created by the Los Angeles office of TBWA\Chiat\Day; for the one-minute ad of black-and-white footage of 17 iconic 20th-century personalities, among them all fifteen named in the body, from Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan and Martin Luther King Jr. to Frank Lloyd Wright and Pablo Picasso; for the two versions of the narration, one by Jobs and one by Dreyfuss, with Jobs choosing the Dreyfuss version on the morning of the first air date; for the "Crazy Ones" spots "directed by Chiat\Day's Jennifer Golub who also shared the art director credit with Jessica Schulman Edelstein and Yvonne Smith"; for the print series in which each ad "featured a portrait of one historic figure, with a small Apple logo and the words "Think different" in one corner, with no reference to the company's products", and for Jobs personally calling the families of Jim Henson and John F. Kennedy and visiting Yoko Ono to secure the rights to the likenesses; for "the 1998 Emmy Award for Best Commercial and the 2000 Grand Effie Award for most effective campaign in America"; and for "Think different" still being printed on the back of the iMac box as of 2020. The article also records a second strand of print ads that prominently featured Apple's computers, and names the Emmy category "Best Commercial" where the body has "Outstanding Commercial". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_different
4. Branding Strategy Insider, Rob Siltanen, "The Real Story Of Apple's 'Think Different' Campaign", 6 February 2013, off whitelist and used for corroboration only, Siltanen's first-person account, for his own role as "Creative Director and managing partner at TBWA/Chiat/Day working on the Apple pitch alongside CEO and Chief Creative Officer, Lee Clow"; for the first meeting with Steve Jobs in Cupertino in "early July, 1997", after which Siltanen "worked non-stop day and night" on the "Crazy ones" script; for Ken Segall, who had worked with Jobs before, joining from Y&R in New York, taking the script forward with "some tweaks" and adding "some beautiful additions to the TV script"; for Siltanen's statement that Isaacson "incorrectly suggests Jobs created and wrote much of the 'To the crazy ones' launch commercial"; and for Jobs's first reaction, "It sucks! I hate it! It's advertising agency shit!", followed by "It's the right thing. It's great." https://brandingstrategyinsider.com/the-real-story-of-apples-think-different-campaign/
5. Creative Review, "The history of the Apple Think Different slogan", 1 February 2012, entry 08 of the magazine's series on advertising slogans, for Rob Siltanen's statement that the line and the concept of pairing it with black-and-white photographs of visionaries were invented by "Craig Tanimoto, a TBWAChiatDay art director at the time"; for IBM running a campaign under the line "ThinkIBM", which Tanimoto's line was meant to play against; and for Jobs wanting, while he waited on the new products, a campaign "that would remind Apple's still loyal fanbase of the qualities that had made it great in the first place". https://www.creativereview.co.uk/apple-think-different-slogan/
6. Wikipedia, "Apple Inc.", read 2 October 2026, for Apple having acquired NeXT, the company founded by Steve Jobs, for its NeXTSTEP operating system; for Jobs becoming Apple's de facto leader after the board ousted Gil Amelio in July 1997 and being "formally appointed interim CEO on September 16"; for Apple reporting major losses by 1997; for Apple having lost "considerable market share to lower-priced Wintel computers" during the 1990s; and for "Think different" having been used in advertising campaigns "From 1997 to 2002". The article dates the completion of the NeXT deal to 7 February 1997 and contains no wording on insolvency or bankruptcy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.
7. Internet Archive, Unofficial NeXT, Inc and Apple, Inc Media Archive, "Apple Internal - Introducing the Think Different Campaign", uploaded 11 October 2021, added during the retrofit, off whitelist and used for corroboration only, for the internal videotape sent to Apple employees around the world, recorded at a meeting dated 23 September 1997, in which Steve Jobs speaks about Apple's situation and introduces the campaign and Lee Clow explains its development, with the Richard Dreyfuss spots. The item says nothing about the tape's effect on morale. https://archive.org/details/introducing-campaign-to-apple-internal
8. Wikipedia, "Apple Inc. advertising", read 2 October 2026, added during the retrofit, for the slogan having been used at the end of several product commercials "until the advent of Apple's Switch ad campaign", and for "Switch" having been launched by Apple on 10 June 2002. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._advertising
9. Apple Newsroom, "Apple to celebrate 50 years of thinking different", 12 March 2026, for the phrase carried into the fiftieth anniversary, with Apple announcing a celebration of "five decades of thinking different" and Tim Cook saying "Thinking different has always been at the heart of Apple". This note replaces the bare Apple Newsroom homepage listed in the sources. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/03/apple-to-celebrate-50-years-of-thinking-different/
