Apple’s marketing history may seem like a continual streak of genius advertising, but even the mighty gadget company has suffered a few stumbles. Take this rarely seen sequel to Apple’s epic “1984” ad spot that features Steve Jobs showing off his acting chops as Franklin Roosevelt in 1944.
The full clip, clocking in at a lengthy 9 minutes, was created for a sales associates meeting held in Hawaii in 1984. Jobs’ role as FDR leading the charge against enemy forces was meant as a rallying call to defeat IBM’s dominance.
My reader Ned Truslow wrote two years in a comment on mac-history.net about this video:
I was a props master on it and also am featured in the video. It was a black and white film that had Steve and his guys acting like generals in World War II and they had Mac soldiers who were being airdropped behind “enemy” lines and taking backpacks filled with Mactosh’s to zombie-fied office workers whose lives were stuck in limbo with old office hardware. Once the Mactosh’s are placed on all the office workers’ desks and switched on, the office workers come more alive and are happy. We shot the plane sequence at an airstrip in Mojave, California, and did most of the stuff with Steve and his guys, along with me taking time off from doing props on the video to act as a zombie office worker, all on a studio soundstage in Los Angeles sometime around July of 1984. Anyway, I’ve never seen this 20-minute video online anywhere. Just would love to know if you have an idea of where it might be located, if anywhere.
Ned Truslow
Okay, here we are.
