It was a PR nightmare for Apple in their haste to capitalise on the momentum of "1984" they had touted their upcoming product too soon, and now all they had to show for their efforts was a sixty-second commercial that was insulting to IBM fans and lemmings alike. There was also the small matter that, for the product itself, the promised launch date of 23rd January 1985 proved to be premature - Macintosh Office could not deliver the business revolution the ad had (somehow) intended to convey, because the file server on which it depended would not be available until 1987.
Turns out, when you liken prospective clients to mindless drones marching blindly toward oblivion they might interpret that as you giving them a particularly brazen middle finger and respond in kind. The general consensus among commentators ( including Daniella Hernandez in this article on Wired) is that "Lemmings" failed because it committed the cardinal advertising sin of openly scorning the very consumers it was looking to resonate with. It's also odd that Disney apparently approved the use of their song in this incredibly dark context, but then maybe the runaway success of "1984" was enough to sway them. Speaking of Disney.what the hell is that song from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs doing here? Yes, I know that it's a convenient shorthand for conveying that this morbid ritual is somehow business-related, but tonally it's all wrong for this scenario and has the effect of making the ad seem even more crass and mean-spirited than it otherwise would have done. These kinds of myths about the animal kingdom tend to be perfectly silly and harmless, until Disney gets it into their heads that it would make for great documentary footage and decides to induce their own lemming mass "suicide" while the cameras are rolling, resulting in a pile of dead furry bodies and one of the most disturbing stories in Hollywood history. The title "Lemmings" is, of course, a nod to the erroneous idea that lemmings commit mass suicide by hurling themselves off cliffs as a means of self-regulating their populations. The ad, with its unsettling but still very flippant depiction of a mass suicide, went over like a lead balloon, drawing the very reaction that the Apple Board of Directors had presumably feared when they expressed their doubts about "1984". "Lemmings" could be called a textbook example of the sophomore slump, only that doesn't quite do justice to how much people reviled this thing. Instead, the Canned Food Information Council stole their thunder with an ad about a CGI robot's hankering for tinned asparagus. The new ad, which promoted the upcoming Macintosh Office, was aired during the Superbowl XIX on 20th January 1985 (an advertising slot for which Apple payed $900,000), but lightning didn't strike twice for Jobs, Wozniak and co. In his place, directing duties were assigned to his brother, Tony Scott, who had recently directed his first feature film, vampire pic The Hunger, starring David Bowie and Susan Sarandon, and whose future directorial credits would include Top Gun (1986), True Romance (1993) and Crimson Tide (1995). Chiat/Day were once again brought on, only Ridley Scott was unavailable. Obviously, it would have to match the epic proportions of "1984", so that the launch of a new Apple ad would always thereafter be seen as an event. With Apple having been crowned the kings of that year's crop of Superbowl advertising, thoughts swiftly turned to a sequel. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had pushed to have the ad shown during the Superbowl, and in the end they came out looking like the smart ones. The response was wildly enthusiastic, yet ironically the ad had been poorly received by Apple's Board of Directors, who were extremely nervous about showing it. The intended message was that 1984 would not be like Nineteen Eighty-Four, because the underdogs at Apple were not going to let the oppressive regime of IBM go unopposed. Developed by advertising agency Chiat/Day and directed by Ridley Scott of Alien and Blade Runner fame, the ad was notable for combining stark and gloomy visuals with a pulse-racing sense of rebellion. The ad in question was for the Apple Macintosh personal computer and featured a plucky young heroine in a Macintosh tank top (Anya Major) sprinting through an Orwellian dystopia and taking on the oppression of an all-seeing dictator (David Graham), armed with only a sledgehammer and her own steely determination. On 22nd January 1984, during the Superbowl XVIII, an ad was aired which generated so much excitement it was quickly cemented as the gold standard of Superbowl advertising. Apple's notorious "Lemmings" commercial from 1985 is one of those special pieces of media that's so phenomenally horrible that it's difficult to know where to begin with it, so let's take it straight from the top.
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