So I mentionned in Part 1 of Advertising Idea: Good or Bad? how Steve Jobs and the creating advertising agency had been some of the few fans of the 1984 commercial before it aired. One year later, it was time to announce the MacIntosh Office via a Super Bowl ad and here is the commercial that was developed:

What is your guess on whether people at Apple thought this was a good ad or a bad ad?

What do you think?

What happened was that this time Jobs was kind of so-so on the ad and once again everyone at Apple HATED the ad.

“It’s insulting to business people, the people we are trying to attract as customers”

But this time the advertising agency was ready for a fight. After all one year earlier everyone had thought their 1984 commercial was really, really bad and now it was an award winner. So the commercial ran and….

People hated it. It was not popular. Was deemed insulting and there was discussion of running an advertisement in the Wall St. Journal or New York Times or both apologizing for it.

So, once again…. before you run it, how easy is it to tell a good advertising idea from a bad one?