Amaya Toman There are very few Apple fans who don't know about the Get a Mac advertising campaign. It was a funny and ironic series of commercials, emphasizing the advantages of the Mac over a regular Windows PC. The campaign was really popular, but Apple quietly ended it in May 2010.
The "Get a Mac" campaign started in 2006, around the time when the company switched to Intel processors for its computers. Steve Jobs wanted to launch into the world a series of promotions that would properly highlight the differences between the new Macs and regular computers - videos in which the competition would get a proper beating. It featured actor Justin Long as a youthfully cool Mac, while comedian John Hodgman portrayed an outdated, malfunctioning PC. The ads from the "Get a Mac" series, like the "Think Different" or "Silhoutte" campaigns, have become memorable and iconic apple spots.
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Creatives from the agency TBWA Media Arts Lab took charge of the ads, and the project reportedly gave them a lot of work - but the result was definitely worth it. Executive Creative Director Eric Grunbaum described how the ad was created on the Campaign website:
“After six months of working on the project, I was surfing somewhere in Malibu with creative director Scott Trattner and we talked about the frustration of trying to come up with the right idea. I told him, 'You know, it's like we should stick to the absolute basics. We need to sit a Mac and a PC side by side and say: This is a Mac. It does A, B, and C well. And this is PC, and it does D, E, and F well.' I remember saying, 'What if we somehow embodied both competitors? One guy might say he's a Mac and the other guy might say he's a PC. Mac could roller skate around the PC and talk about how fast it is.'
After this proposal, things finally started to take off and one of the most legendary Apple advertising campaigns was born.
Of course, nothing went without criticism. Seth Stevenson called the campaign "vicious" in his article for Slate magazine. Charlie Brooker wrote for The Guardian that the way in which both actors are perceived in the British version (Mitchell in the sitcom Peep Show portrayed a neurotic loser, while Webb a selfish poser) may affect how the public will view Macs and PCs.
End of campaign
The "Get a Mac" campaign ran in the United States over the next few years. It was directed by Phil Morrison and had a total of sixty-six spots and gradually spread to other countries - the British version featured, for example, David Mitchell and Robert Webb. The historically last spot from the entire campaign appeared on television screens in October 2009 and then continued on the apple company's website. But on May 21, 2010, the section replaced the page with advertising "Why You'll Love a Mac". Meanwhile, the Cupertino company's TV commercials began to focus more on the iPhone, which represented one of Apple's main priorities.
But the reverberations of "Get a Mac" were strong and long-lasting. The commercials have received various parodies - one of the more unknown ones promotes Linux, Valve referenced the campaign at promotion the Steam platform for Mac.
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