Neither Microsoft nor Coca-Cola: the best Super Bowl ad ever was a work of art by the world’s most valuable brand

As the most-watched sporting event on the planet, drawing a television audience of hundreds of millions, the Super Bowl is the perfect platform for top brands to promote and showcase their products.

Which is why many listed companies are willing to splash out millions of dollars to secure a spot in the broadcast. Advertising space is at a premium and hugely expensive. The price of a 30-second commercial during Super Bowl LIX is an eye-watering $8 million - up a million dollars from last year.

Commercials have been an integral part of the Super Bowl experience since televisions became more affordable for US households in the 1960s.

Many have become iconic for the way they tap into the mood of the moment, for their cinematic qualities, special effects or just for making people laugh.

Arguably the most iconic Super Bowl ad of all was Apple’s famous 1984 commercial shown during a timeout in the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII between the Redskins and the Raiders on 22 January 1984.

It was one of 19 ads shown during the game, and one of four promoting the latest advancements in home computers in the new digital age.

Steve Hayden was hired to write the copy, Brent Thomas as art director and Alien and Blade Runner director Sir Ridley Scott was in charge of bringing it all together.

The ad was a nod to George Orwell‘s 1949 novel - a peek into a dystopian, Big Brother future with citizens trampled under a totalitarianism regime, mass surveillance and repression.

Apple’s iconic 1984 Super Bowl ad

Apple’s ad ran for one minute featured a “Big Brother” figure addressing a large crowd of subjects all dressed in the same clothes from a giant video screen in a stark, gray conference room. “Today we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives,” he exclaims.

The ad then quickly cuts to a blonde athlete sprinting with a hammer being chased by a group of storm troopers.

“We have created for the first time in all history a garden of pure ideology,” continues the public announcement. “Where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests of any contradictory true thoughts”.

The female hammer thrower reaches the conference hall with the storm troopers in close pursuit. She launches her hammer just in time, smashing the video screen, just as the announcer proclaims, “We shall prevail!” leaving onlookers in stunned silence.

The camera pans through an open-mouthed crowd as the punch line is delivered: “On January 24th Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ’1984‘”.

While it might seem tame now, at the time Apple’s ad was revolutionary - unlike anything seen before, and marked a before and after in Super Bowl advertising as it raised the bar considerably.

It also somehow captured the zeitgeist of a dark time in history - the Cold War, arms race, concern about the future and nuclear war while showing how different the world actually was compared to Orwell’s predictions.

“We were all so scared about 1984, so it tapped into that brilliantly,” sports marketing expert David Stubley told CNN. “Everyone thought the world was going to come to an end in 1984, if you’d read George Orwell’s book. And so to have this take on that whole scariness and confront it in such a brilliant way, I think it really caught people’s imagination.”

For Apple the ad could not have been a bigger success - the company reportedly sold 72,000 computers in the 100 days after the game - 50 percent more than it had projected. That alone brought in $150 million - five times the estimated $300,000 budget to make the ad.

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