# Steve Jobs, internal 'Think Different' meeting (Apple, 23 September 1997)

- Speaker: Steve Jobs
- Event: Apple internal employee meeting (Town Hall, Cupertino), introducing the 'Think Different' campaign
- Date: 23 September 1997
- Length: Jobs speaks for about 15.5 minutes (00:17 to 15:51); the archived tape (39 min) continues with Lee Clow of TBWA\Chiat\Day and sample ads
- Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDD5G2_6hdA (also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Fs0pD2Hsk); archived tape: https://archive.org/details/introducing-campaign-to-apple-internal
- Slides: None. Jobs speaks standing, then plays the 60-second 'Crazy Ones' ad on a screen.
- Transcript source: The archive.org caption file for the tape (human-made, with speaker labels), lightly merged into longer lines. A Whisper (model medium) transcript of the same tape was used as a second check. Timestamps are from the tape, which starts at Jobs' first words. Jobs speaks 00:17 to 15:51; Lee Clow of TBWA\Chiat\Day follows, then sample ads.
- Format: `[mm:ss]` is the time the line starts in the source recording. Machine transcript: expect small word errors; quotes used in the analysis were checked against the published text where one exists.

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[00:07] [Applause] Steve Jobs: Good morning. We were up until 3 o'clock last night finishing this advertising.
[00:25] And I want to show it to you in a minute, see what you think of it. I've been back about 8 to 10 weeks.
[00:32] And we've been working really hard. And what we're trying to do is not something really highfalutin.
[00:41] We're trying to get back to the basics. We're trying to get back to the basics of great products, great marketing, and great distribution.
[00:51] And I think that Apple has pockets of greatness, but in some ways has drifted away from doing the basics really well.
[00:59] So we started with the product line. We looked at the product road map going out for a few years.
[01:06] And we said, a lot of this doesn't make sense. And it's way too much stuff.
[01:10] And there's not enough focus. And so we actually got rid of 70% of the stuff on the product road map.
[01:15] I mean, I couldn't figure out the damn product line after a few weeks. I kept saying, well, what is this model?
[01:20] How does this fit? And I started talking to customers, and they couldn't figure it out either.
[01:24] And so you're going to see the product line get much simpler. And you're going to see the product line get much better.
[01:33] And there's some new stuff coming out that's incredibly nice. In addition, we've been able to focus a lot more on the 30% of the gems and add some new stuff in that is going to take us in some whole new direction.
[01:45] So we are incredibly excited about the products. And I think we're really thinking differently about the kinds of products we have to build.
[01:56] And the engineering team, is incredibly excited. I mean, I came out of the meeting with people that had just gotten their projects canceled, and they were
[02:03] three feet off the ground with excitement because they finally understood where in the heck we were going.
[02:09] And they were really excited about the strategy. In the same way, we, I think, have not been as we have not kept up with innovations in our distribution.
[02:21] Well, I'll give you an example. I'm sure it was talked about this morning.
[02:23] But we've got anywhere from two to three months of inventory in our manufacturing supplier pipeline and about an equal amount in our distribution channel pipeline.
[02:33] So we're having to make guesses four, five, six months in advance about what the customer wants.
[02:38] And we're not smart enough to do that. I don't think Einstein's smart enough to do that.
[02:40] So what we're going to do is get really simple and start taking inventory out of those pipelines so we can let the customer tell us what they want, and we can respond to it super fast.
[02:50] And you're going to see us be doing a lot of things like that today. It's just the first of many things we're going to be doing with you.
[02:56] So we're going to be not only, I think, catching up to where the best of the best are in distribution, but we're going to actually be innovating and be
[03:06] breaking some new ground, I think, in the coming several months. And I'm pretty excited about that as well in the distribution manufacturing side of things.
[03:15] And that gets us to the marketing side of things. To me, marketing is about values.
[03:28] This is a very complicated world. It's a very noisy world. And we're not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us.
[03:40] No company is. And so we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us.
[03:48] Now, Apple, fortunately, is one of the half a dozen best brands in the whole world, right up there with Nike, Disney, Coke, Sony.
[03:59] It is one of the greats of the greats, not just in this country, but all around the globe.
[04:06] But even a great brand needs investment and caring if it's going to retain its relevance and vitality.
[04:13] And the Apple brand has clearly suffered from neglect in this area in the last few years.
[04:20] And we need to bring it back. The way to do that is not to talk about speeds and feeds.
[04:29] It's not to talk about nips and megahertz. It's not to talk about why we're better than Windows.
[04:35] The dairy industry tried for 20 years to convince you that milk was good for you.
[04:40] It's a lie, but they tried anyway. And the sales were going like this. And then they tried Got Milk and the sales have gone like this.
[04:48] Got Milk doesn't even talk about the product. Matter of fact, it focuses on the absence of the product.
[04:52] [Applause] But the best example of all and one of the greatest jobs of marketing in the universe has ever seen is Nike.
[05:04] Remember, Nike sells a commodity. They sell shoes. And yet, when you think of Nike, you feel something different than a shoe company.
[05:12] In their ads, as you know, they don't ever talk about the product. They don't ever tell you about their air soles and why they're better than Reebok's air soles.
[05:19] What does Nike do in their advertising? They honor great athletes, and they honor great athletics.
[05:27] That's who they are. That's what they are about. Apple spends a fortune on advertising.
[05:36] You'd never know it. You'd never know it. So when I got here, Apple just fired their agency.
[05:46] They were doing a competition with 23 agencies that four years from now would have picked one.
[05:50] And we blew that up. And we hired Chiat/Day, the ad agency that I was fortunate enough to work with years ago.
[06:00] We created some award-winning work, including the commercial voted the best ad ever made in 1984 by advertising professionals.
[06:08] And we started working about eight weeks ago. And the question we asked was, our customers want to know who is Apple and what is it that we stand for?
[06:19] Where do we fit in this world? And what we're about isn't making boxes for people to get their jobs done, although we do that well.
[06:33] We do that better than almost anybody in some cases. But Apple's about something more than that.
[06:42] Apple at the core, its core value is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.
[06:54] That's what we believe. And we've had the opportunity to work with people like that.
[06:59] We've had an opportunity to work with people like you, with software developers, with customers who have done it in some big and some small ways.
[07:06] And we believe that in this world. People can change it for the better. And that those people that are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that actually do.
[07:19] And so what we're going to do in our first brand marketing campaign in several years is to get back to that core value.
[07:33] A lot of things have changed. The market's a totally different place than it was a decade ago.
[07:40] And Apple's totally different. And Apple's place in it is totally different.
[07:42] And believe me, the products and the distribution strategy and the manufacturing are totally different.
[07:46] And we understand that. But values and core values, those things shouldn't change.
[07:54] The things that Apple believed in at its core are the same things that Apple really stands for today.
[08:04] And so we wanted to find a way to communicate this. And what we have is something that I am very moved by.
[08:21] It honors those people who have changed the world. Some of them are living, some of them are not.
[08:31] But the ones that aren't, as you'll see, you know that if they'd ever used a computer, it would have been a Mac.
[08:39] [Applause] The theme of the campaign is "Think Different". It's honoring the people who think different and who move this world forward.
[08:57] And it is what we are about. It touches the soul of this company. So I'm going to go ahead and roll it, and I hope that you feel the same way about it I do.
[09:14] [Music] Richard Dreyfuss: Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently.
[09:31] They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
[09:47] Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
[10:00] Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
[10:07] [Music] [Applause] Steve Jobs: So that puts it out there. That puts us out there saying, this is who we are.
[10:32] This is what we stand for. I don't know, do you like it? Yeah? Good. [Applause] I know that some people will criticize us for not talking about all those things about why we have better plug and play.
[10:50] But we've got to let people know who Apple is and why it's still relevant in this world.
[10:59] And I think this will do a pretty good job. We are breaking this campaign this Sunday in a rather poetic way.
[11:08] The Wonderful World of Disney is restarting on ABC. And the first thing they're showing this Sunday night, I believe it's at 7 o'clock, is the network premiere of Toy Story.
[11:19] And we [Applause] We're going to have two 60-second spots. This commercial will run twice, once in the first hour and once in the second hour.
[11:29] We are then going to break some newspaper ads in the Journal, the Times, the Mercury, the Examiner, USA Today, really stating the manifesto, the words.
[11:42] And then I'm going to show you what's going to break within two weeks. We've got some phenomenal print.
[11:48] This ad will run throughout most of October on television. And we're breaking some phenomenal print within a few weeks, mostly on the back covers of magazines, some on the inside.
[11:58] We've got some incredible billboards. And we're even painting some giant walls in about five or six major cities.
[12:07] Before I show you this stuff, I want to let you know that in this day and age, to use any of these people, whether alive or dead, you need major permission from either themselves, if they're alive, or their estates representatives if they're dead.
[12:23] Almost all of these people have never appeared in an advertisement before and never would until we asked them.
[12:29] I mean, I got permission from Yoko Ono a few days ago to use John. And it's been an incredibly moving experience for me that these people, both living and dead, their estates, have felt so strongly about Apple
[12:50] that they were willing to let us do this. I don't think there is another company on earth that could have done this campaign.
[13:02] And that, to me, is something very special. So I got a videotape here of some of the print and the outdoor stuff.
[13:08] And if we could just run that, I want you to get a feel for that. This is an example of a print ad you might see in the back of the magazine.
[13:32] This was an image owned by Time Warner that they've never released before.
[13:37] Martha Graham. Thomas Edison. Alfred Hitchcock. You can't see it on the video, but these images are just stunning.
[14:02] Look at this. Outdoor Muhammad Ali. [Applause] All this stuff is going up in the next two weeks.
[14:43] You know who that is? Rosa Parks. There'll be five buses running around five major cities like that.
[14:53] So that's what we're doing. [Applause] We've been working pretty hard to wrap this up the last few days and nights, but it's the best work I've seen in an awful long time.
[15:10] I think it's the best work Apple's ever done. Now, advertising is not everything.
[15:16] And we've got some incredibly exciting product announcements coming up soon.
[15:25] Some incredibly exciting things in general are going to be happening over the next 90 to 120 days.
[15:30] And I really deeply appreciate all of the commitment that's in this room and with the people not in this room to turning this company around.
[15:38] This company is absolutely going to turn around. As a matter of fact, I think the question now is not, can we turn around Apple?
[15:46] I think that's the booby prize. I think it's, can we make Apple really great again?
[15:51] So thank you for your time. [Applause] Lee Clow: Hi, everybody. Most of you have heard the news.
[16:05] We are working for Apple Computer again. It's an amazingly fun opportunity to work with Steve Jobs, who founded this company.
[16:21] And I think he's on a mission from God to prove that the people that took the company away from him didn't get it and made mistakes.
[16:31] And now that he's back, I think he'd like nothing more than to make Apple into one of those most talked about brands in the world again and it's the
[16:43] reason I'm so excited about being able to do this as well. They started talking about having a review at Apple and we basically decided not to participate when it was the
[16:59] marketing team that had been handling Apple for the last year or two because basically I felt like they were desperate and didn't know what they were doing and
[17:13] it would have been booking passage on the Titanic. But I think Steve Jobs is one of the most amazing people I've ever worked with and has a real chance of making this brand famous and great again.
[17:30] And in that regard, I think we're going to have a real good opportunity to not only capture and articulate what Apple the brand and the products are in America, but I think that it would make very good sense for them to use
[17:52] TBWA all over the world to articulate the brand the persona of the brand and and I think it will go a long way for our company in terms of taking one of those beautiful symbols, you know, a striped apple,
[18:11] and making it important and famous everywhere in the world. So, I'm making this tape for offices in many parts of the world to understand what we, so far, have talked to
[18:25] Apple about, so that you can have a leg up when you meet with whoever is... are the representatives of Apple in...
[18:37] in Europe, South Africa, Asia, Australia, wherever. I think we have zeroed in on a way of thinking about Apple that, one, is true to the company and true to the spirit of what
[18:55] Steve Jobs intended when he created Apple, and also one that I think will translate well into a lot of different cultures.
[19:08] When Steve started Apple, his vision was that a computer should be a tool that helps you think, that helps you create, that helps you imagine things and do things.
[19:24] He referred to it as a bicycle for your mind. Today, with the proliferation of PCs and Windows, It's becoming a very, you know, the reality is that it's in every office place as a tool, but it's much more of a
[19:48] glorified typewriter, adding machine, information system than a tool to help you think and imagine and be creative.
[20:00] Where Macintosh, from its beginning, And Apple from its beginning was always dedicated to making tools that did much more than just allowed you to manipulate information.
[20:16] So I think the idea for Apple in the future is to dedicate itself to the creative people, to the thinkers, to the idea people in business, in the arts, in graphic design, in film making,
[20:32] dedicate the brand to those creative thinkers who would like to have a tool that, in its way of interfacing with you, allowed you to be better than you would be without the tool, but was not something that complicated your life.
[20:53] So, Apple has a real place to live. Macintosh has a real place to live as a tool that creative people use.
[21:06] Creative people, at least in this country, swear by Macintosh. The graphic designers, the filmmakers, the editors, the website designers, the video game designers, and
[21:18] even the creative business people who create presentations and try and represent their thinking graphically, truly believe in Macintosh and Apple the machine.
[21:32] And there's some pretty amazing, famous people who swear by Macintosh and swear by Apple and believe it's a tool that they desperately need.
[21:44] But in America, the first job we have to do is to get people to believe again in Apple that it's that great company, and the tools are those great tools that the company was founded on.
[22:03] And again, in this country, to convince people that they are not going out of business, and they are not going to stop making Macintosh, but in fact, they are going to find themselves again, and find their soul, and find their center, is the first job of advertising.
[22:20] To go out and celebrate the notion that Apple understands why they're in business, who they make these tools for, and celebrate the creativity of the people who basically love the machines.
[22:36] Therefore, the positioning for the Apple brand, as we articulate, is tools for creative minds.
[22:44] And that kind of leaves wide open where they might go in the future in terms of what kind of tools they're going to create for these creative minds that want to use Macintosh today, whether it's a new operating system or whether it's better software, whatever it is in the
[23:02] future, if Apple can stay focused and dedicated to the more creative thinkers in our society, it's a beautiful and wonderful and special niche.
[23:14] Because if you can own that, Who wouldn't want to see themselves as a creative thinker as opposed to just a worker?
[23:27] So I would like to think that it's a huge niche as opposed to a small niche for the Apple brand to occupy.
[23:34] Creative people, idea people, have a Macintosh sitting on their desk or carry a PowerBook in their briefcase or on airplanes with them.
[23:45] The regular workers of our society carry a Compaq or an IBM and, you know, can deal with Windows and be content with that.
[23:56] So, tools for creative minds and then so therefore the strategy is to act, to do our damnedest, to not act like a computer company and celebrate creativity
[24:08] and individuality in all of us, whether it be the people in the world today that are doing amazing and great things, the people in our history that
[24:20] change the world and the next generation, the children who are potentially going to change the world even more.
[24:29] And we are dedicated to making tools for those people. As you can sense, I get kind of excited and passionate about this.
[24:38] This is a brand that I think you need to be emotionally involved in to do the work that needs to be done for them.
[24:47] I know the brand is in different stages of development in different parts of the world.
[24:52] I know in Scandinavia, nobody knows of the problems in America in terms of Apple and Windows, and Macintosh and Apple is hugely successful there.
[25:06] In Japan, Apple has an incredible status as a great brand. As a matter of fact, I think they were very upset about any kind of relationship that Apple has with Microsoft
[25:18] because they think of Apple as being so special in Japan. And each of your countries, I think we're going to have to assess where Apple the brand is today.
[25:30] But I think ultimately, the idea that we are going to celebrate that Apple is for people who think outside the box, who look at the world differently and are probably going to change the world
[25:43] Apple is for people who think different, is going to be an idea that can be consistent in many parts of the world.
[25:53] If we celebrate the most creative thinkers in any part, in every part of the world, and basically claim to be a tool for those kinds of people, I think it gives Apple a very special place to live.
[26:07] So, we are sending along Some ideas that we've created for an initial outdoor campaign that kind of gets people rethinking the Apple brand.
[26:21] We sent along a couple of video pieces that we have done, which aren't commercials, but they were done to kind of celebrate the Apple brand and Steve Jobs' vision of what Apple should be about.
[26:38] And it in fact was part of what he used in his speech at Macworld in Boston, which I don't know about other parts of the world, but it was on
[26:47] the cover, the front page of every newspaper in America, that Steve Jobs was back in charge of Apple, and he was redefining the vision for Apple.
[26:59] So we're getting on this thing at an incredibly exciting time. So the elements of what we've already presented to them, a strategic paper and some of the work, hopefully will get you in a place where you can
[27:17] talk to the Apple people in your part of the world about where Apple is going in America and what Steve Jobs is expecting of the Apple brand.
[27:28] It's his child and he wants to see it grow up into an amazing adult And it's had a very rough adolescence with maybe not the best care and feeding from the people who have been there.
[27:44] And Steve and I would like nothing more than to make Apple one of the most formidable brands in the world.
[27:53] It would be one of the giant satisfaction of Steve's life. And I think it would be a huge accomplishment for this agency and for all of us to be part of putting them back on the map.
[28:08] So I'm wearing my Apple t-shirt today. The idea that you're going to be seeing in all the videos is "Think Different".
[28:17] "Think Different" is the idea for the Apple brand and grab hold of it. See how it fits into your particular part of the world and try and get the people who work for Apple
[28:34] in the other parts of the world to be as passionate as we are here in California.
[28:41] And we can have a great deal of fun working for this company. So good luck.
[28:48] Peter Economides is going to be trying to help shepherd this through. We are available in L.A., myself, Jessica Shulman, Laurie Kutz, if we can do anything
[28:58] that will help as you start talking to Apple clients in different parts of the world.
[29:05] This is kind of a long stream of consciousness thing, so I hope it made some sense, but it seemed like a better way than trying to write this all out on paper.
[29:13] With the, uh, stuff that we pack into this thing, hopefully you all get a good picture of what, uh, what we need to do next.
[29:21] Thanks. This is gonna be fun. Always something interesting going on. ♪ Seal - Crazy ♪ ♪ No we're never gonna survive unless ♪ ♪ We are a little crazy ♪
[30:23] ♪ No no, never survive, unless we get a little bit crazy ♪ ♪ No no, never survive, unless we get a little bit ♪ ♪ In a sky full of people, only some want to fly ♪
[30:50] ♪ Isn't that crazy ♪ ♪ In a world full of people, only some want to fly ♪ ♪ Isn't that crazy ♪ ♪ Seal - Crazy ♪ Lee Clow: So we are now working on a commercial celebrating the misfits, the
[31:22] rebels, the troublemakers, the crazy ones who turned out to be the geniuses.
[31:29] But here's another commercial that we did a little rough idea piece on because we thought celebrating Steve Jobs coming back to the company was an important message.
[31:41] In fact, when Steve went to Boston and Macworld, he got so much news and so much attention that we don't need to do this commercial, but we thought you'd like to see it.
[31:53] Narrator: There were these two guys, one named Wozniak and one named Jobs, who got together in a garage and decided to create something special.
[32:02] The first personal computer. Nobody thought the idea would fly, but they did.
[32:08] So they started a company and they named it Apple. It was a simple name, but that was what their company was about.
[32:14] So it was perfect. Now Folklore has it that they gave their logo rainbow colors because they knew that Apple was their pot of gold.
[32:23] But really, they just did it because they thought it looked cool. Anyway, before you knew it, these two guys and their company became famous.
[32:31] And people all over the world were soon able to do incredible things that had never been done before.
[32:37] As the years went on, the company got big, and the two guys became rich, and they left.
[32:45] The company still created amazing computers, because while a body changes, the soul has a way of staying the same.
[32:53] Wozniak has since gone on to teach school children. As for Jobs, he's just come back home.
[32:59] [Music] Apple. Think different. [Music] [Music] Richard Dreyfuss: Here's to the crazy ones.
[33:16] The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.
[33:24] The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo.
[33:33] You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
[33:43] Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
[33:55] Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
[34:03] [Music] [Music] Some people think the Pentium II is the fastest processor in the world.
[34:32] Not quite. The chip inside every new Power Macintosh G3 is up to twice as fast.
[34:39] [Music] [Music] Apple Computer would like to apologize for toasting the Pentium II processor in public.
[35:03] But the fact remains, the chip inside every new Power Macintosh G3 is up to twice as fast.
[35:22] There's a time and a place for subtlety. This is definitely not the time or the place.
[35:31] Because the entire Pentium notebook world has just been flattened by a machine with a chip that's up to twice as fast.
[35:41] [Music] [Music] Jeff Goldblum: The PC. Perpetually complicated, profusely corded, physically conspicuous, particularly costly.
[36:10] Oh, and then there's the new iMac, which is about as un-PC as you can get.
[36:17] [Music] [Music] Jeff Goldblum: Presenting three easy steps to the internet.
[36:29] Step one, plug in. Step two, get connected. Step three, there's no step three.
[36:44] There's no step three. [Music] [Music] Jeff Goldblum: You are getting tired.
[37:03] You are getting sick and tired of slow, complicated, and confusing. What you want is one mouse click to the internet.
[37:20] [Music] Jeff Goldblum: Hmm, two roads diverged on the way to the Internet.
[37:39] And I, I took the faster, simpler, less expensive, and far more colorful one.
[37:52] And that made all the difference. [Music] Jeff Goldblum: So, you know, it seems like there's a big party going on these days.
[38:07] Everybody's saying, what's your email address? What's your email address?
[38:09] Hey, everybody, I'll email you. I don't have an email. What's this? You know, like that?
[38:17] And you feel left out. You feel confused. It's too expensive or something.
[38:19] Well, now good news. There's a computer so easy. Ten minutes out of the box, you're onto the internet.
[38:22] You're emailing everybody. You're part of the party. It's as easy as, you know, licking a stamp.
[38:27] [Music] Jeff Goldblum: Hey, did you ever ask anybody what their favorite color is?
[38:39] I'm sure you have, or people have asked you. It's not the most interesting question.
[38:41] But how many times do you say beige? Never. Because it's one of the worst colors.
[38:46] It's hardly even a color. It's like oatmeal or sand. There's nothing. It's beige.
[38:50] It's boring. It's bland. Now, computers, why in heaven's name have the people who've made computers before never done anything but beige?
[38:57] That's nuts. Have they been in thinking jail? That's crazy. [Music]