Want to know if a new-product idea is any good?
Create an ad for it.
Or, better yet, a billboard.
That's how Apple rose "from flame to fame" in the late '90s.
Using journal entries and agency memos, California adman Rob Siltanen constructs an account of the birth of Apple's legendary "Think different" campaign in Branding Strategy Insider.
On a July afternoon in 1997, in a cluttered conference room inside Siltanen's agency, the campaign began life as a series of billboards.
They looked just like the ads that would eventually appear on TV and in newspapers and magazines nationwide a few months later.
The idea for the campaign paired two sources: an IBM ad campaign running at the time ("Think IBM") and Ralph Waldo Emerson's chestnut, “To be a genius is to be misunderstood."
No sooner had "Think Different" launched than "Apple became the talk of the town," Siltanen recalls.
The ads pushed consumers "to suddenly think about the brand in a whole new way."
Within 12 months, Apple rolled out the multicolored iMac and the company's stock price shot up 300 percent.
Want an acid test for your new idea?
Think billboard.
