Super Tech Ads

During Super Bowl XVIII, Apple ran what became an iconic ad for its Macintosh computers. A female runs through an Orwellian world with a sledgehammer, and throws the sledgehammer at a television image of Big Brother (meant to represent IBM). The voiceover: “On Jan. 24, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984.” Testament to the ad’s brilliance is the fact that it continues to be parodied-

Once you’re past the age of, oh, 35, you’ve probably come to realize that you’re not what you wanted to be when you grew up-

“Uno, dos, tres, cuatro!” Apple hooked up with U2 in 2004. The result was a television ad that promoted both Apple’s music products (including the U2 Special Edition iPod) and U2’s then-new album, “How to dismantle an atomic bomb.” The ad mixed the iconic iPod silhouette images with what would be the first single off the album, the addictive “Vertigo.”

Apple wasn’t the only one to know a good song when it heard one, and it wasn’t first: Providing the soundtrack to the campaign for Windows 95 (and the operating system’s Start button) was the Rolling Stones’ “Start me up.” There’s no question that “Start me up” is a great song, but many did question whether Microsoft had listened to the sexually explicit lyrics. (The song was also one of three played by the Rolling Stones during halftime at the Super Bowl in 2006.)

Apple rolled out a campaign in 2006 that featured a bespectacled, slightly nerdish actor (John Hodgman) representing Windows, and a young, cool, hip actor (Justin Long) representing the Mac. The ads present the Windows character as problem-prone and constantly exasperated, and the Mac character as always cool and collected – but thanks to the likable actors, without seeming mean-spirited and overtly negative. I personally like the “Cancel or allow” ad, which pokes fun at Windows Vista’s sometimes annoying security model.

It was the height of the .com boom, and tech ads at the Super Bowl flowed more freely than the beer consumed by the millions watching the game. Pets.com, which would become the poster child for .com companies that rode the bubble and went bust-

In a series of popular ads that began in 2000, actor Ben Curtis played the slacker-ish Steven, who popularized the phrase, “Dude, you’re getting a Dell! Unfortunately, Curtis was also getting (or trying to get) marijuana, and was arrested in 2003. Dell ended its relationship with Curtis, and started a (forgettable) campaign about three Dell interns.

GoDaddy,com has become famous more for ads that haven-

A “bunny suit” is a spacesuit-like garment worn by employees in a clean room to protect processors and the like from human particles such as skin or hair as they are being manufactured. Intel has hordes of bunny-suited employees, and the company put the spotlight on them in a series of ads, for its Pentium MMX chip, that debuted during Super Bowl 1997 (and was then parodied by Apple).

A laptop is a laptop is a laptop, right? Not unless it’s a system used by Jay-Z for the really cool tasks he must undertake, or any of the other celebrities Hewlett-Packard tapped for its “The computer is personal again” campaign, begun in 2006. The ads’ stunning graphics also featured the headless visages of Jerry Seinfeld, Serena Williams and Petra Nemcova, among others.

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