Description

"1984" is an American television commercial that introduced the Apple Macintosh personal computer. It was conceived by Steve Hayden, Brent Thomas, and Lee Clow at Chiat/Day, produced by New York production company Fairbanks Films, and directed by Ridley Scott. The ad was a reference to George Orwell's noted 1949 novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which described a dystopian future ruled by a televised "Big Brother". English athlete Anya Major performed as the unnamed heroine and David Graham as Big Brother. In the US, it first aired in 10 local outlets, including Twin Falls, Idaho, where Chiat/Day ran the ad on December 31, 1983, at the last possible break before midnight on KMVT, so that the advertisement qualified for the 1984 Clio Awards. Its second televised airing, and only US national airing, was on January 22, 1984, during a break in the third quarter of the telecast of Super Bowl XVIII by CBS.