The 1990s Think Different campaign linked Apple to famous social figures such as John Lennon and Mahatma Gandhi, while also introducing "Think Different" as a new slogan for the company.

A "Macintosh Introduction" 18-page brochure was included with various magazines in December 1983, often remembered because Bill Gates was featured on page 11.

[1] For a special post-election edition of Newsweek in November 1984, Apple spent more than $2.5 million to buy all of the advertising pages in the issue (a total of 39).

One ad contrasted the original Macintosh and its simple user brochure to the IBM Personal Computer with its stacks of complicated manuals.

"1984" (directed by Ridley Scott) is the title of the television commercial that launched the Macintosh personal computer in the United States, in January 1984.

[3] The ad showed an unnamed heroine (played by Anya Major) wearing orange shorts, red running shoes, and a white tank top with a Picasso-style picture of Apple's Macintosh computer, running through an Orwellian world to throw a sledgehammer at a TV image of Big Brother — an implied representation of IBM played by David Graham.

Two years later, Apple released a short film titled Pencil Test to showcase the Macintosh II's animation capabilities.

When Apple let the Mac become a religious issue more than a tool, the consequence was high visibility and a lot of great press — but also a limited market.

Print ads and television commercials featured celebrities describing how the PowerBook helped them in their businesses and everyday lives.

The one-minute commercial featured black and white video footage of significant historical people of the past, including (in order) Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King Jr., Richard Branson, John Lennon, R. Buckminster Fuller, Thomas Edison, Muhammad Ali, Ted Turner, Maria Callas, Mahatma Gandhi, Amelia Earhart, Alfred Hitchcock, Martha Graham, Jim Henson (with Kermit the Frog), Frank Lloyd Wright, and Picasso.

In order: Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lennon, Martha Graham, Muhammad Ali, Alfred Hitchcock, Mahatma Gandhi, Jim Henson, Maria Callas, Picasso, and Jerry Seinfeld.

They featured a portrait of one of the historic figures shown in the television ad, with a small Apple logo and the words "Think Different" in one corner (with no reference to the company's products).

An international television and print ad campaign directed users to a website where various myths about the Mac platform were dispelled.

The TV advertisements have used a variety of songs from both mainstream and relatively unknown artists, whilst some commercials have featured silhouettes of specific artists including Bob Dylan, U2, Eminem, Jet, The Ting Tings, Yael Naïm, CSS, Caesars, and Wynton Marsalis.

[citation needed] The ads, which are directed by Phil Morrison, star actor Justin Long (Accepted) and author and humorist John Hodgman (The Daily Show) as a Macintosh (Mac) computer and a Windows PC, respectively.

[10] Apple debuted a new series of ads produced by TBWA\Media Arts Lab during television broadcasts of the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony.

The ads were widely criticized, with some, including former TBWA\Chiat\Day creative director Ken Segall remarking that it portrayed Apple customers as clueless.

[15] Apple aims to win over the majority of smartphone users by showing customers the great features the iPhone has to offer.

In September 2016, the "Don't Blink" web video campaign was launched, which described the new Apple product line in 107 seconds with fast typography.

A 2005 iPod campaign starring rapper Eminem, called "Detroit", was criticized for being too similar to a 2002 advertisement for Lugz boots.

[25] In August 2008, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the UK banned one iPhone ad from further broadcast in its original form due to "misleading claims".

The ASA took issue with the ads' claim that "all parts of the internet are on the iPhone", when the device did not support Java or Adobe's third-party Flash web browser plug-in.