ZINGER KEY POINTS
- A Super Bowl commercial from Apple in 1984 is one of the most remembered of all time.
- The commercial helped Apple highlight an upcoming product launch and also take aim at a rival.
Super Bowl commercials come with a price tag of $7 million for Super Bowl LVII. Some of the ads will be remembered for years, while others will be easily forgotten. Here’s a look at one of the most famous commercials of all-time and the potential massive fortune it made by investors.
What Happened: The 1983 NFL season culminated with Super Bowl XVII, a game that saw the Raiders beating the Redskins 39-9 on Jan. 22, 1984. The game was watched by over 77 million people on CBS, and saw commercials come with a cost of $368,200, a far cry from the $7 million commanded by Fox Corporation
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, which has the rights in 2023.
One company that used the 1984 Super Bowl to promote an upcoming product launch was Apple Inc
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.
Apple used Super Bowl XVII to unveil its national commercial called “1984,” which announced the launch of the Mac computers. The ad was directed by Ridley Scott and featured analogies of Big Brother from the George Orwell novel “1984.”
The commercial may have also poked fun at International Business Machines
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and provided a warning that Apple was coming after them in the computer sector and challenging for market share.
Apple’s commercial is considered by many to be one of the greatest Super Bowl ads of all time, and one of the most talked about and remembered ads of the last several decades.
Investing $1,000 in Apple Stock: The commercial from Apple aired during the third quarter of the Super Bowl and highlighted an upcoming product, which proved to be a major catalyst for Apple.
Anyone watching the commercial who felt like it was well done, might have been convinced that Apple could compete in the computer space, and may have chosen to invest in shares of the company.
Apple traded at a split-adjusted price of $0.13 on the Monday after Super Bowl XVII (Jan. 23, 1984). A $1,000 investment could have purchased 7,692.31 shares of AAPL at the time.
The $1,000 investment in AAPL shares would be worth $1,162,615.73 today, based on a price of $151.01 for Apple stock at the time of writing.
The Super Bowl commercial from Apple was a key event for the company and could have been a key moment for investors who recognized the potential of Apple.
