Steve Hayden, an award-winning promoting author and government who helped create the thunderclap of a tv business in 1984 that positioned Apple’s new Macintosh private pc as a weapon for artistic freedom, died on Aug. 27 in Patchogue, N.Y., on Lengthy Island. He was 78.
His dying, in a hospital close to his dwelling in Bellport, was confirmed by his associate, Kristina Allen. She didn’t specify the trigger.
Mr. Hayden performed essential roles in promoting campaigns for IBM, Motorola and different shoppers. However he was finest recognized for his collaboration with, amongst others, the director Ridley Scott and Lee Clow, the artistic director of the Chiat/Day advert company, on the 60-second business that launched the Macintosh with out displaying it — and that was proven nationally solely as soon as, throughout the Tremendous Bowl on Jan. 22, 1984. (It was additionally proven on not less than one native station.)
Mr. Hayden was a copywriter for Chiat/Day when, as he recalled, Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder and chairman, instructed the company in 1983 that he needed a business for the Macintosh that will “cease the world in its tracks.” The artistic staff brainstormed a few theme surrounding “Nineteen Eighty-4,” George Orwell’s 1949 novel depicting a future through which a totalitarian regime led by a person often known as Massive Brother suppresses essential thought. The advert was broadly considered as an implicit assault in opposition to IBM, Apple’s rival.
“Given the sunny good nature of the common individual,” Mr. Hayden stated in an oral historical past interview with The New York Occasions in 2024 in regards to the making of the business, “wouldn’t this be a fantastic device to insurgent in opposition to authorities overreach, particularly in elements of the world the place information is suppressed, manipulated or so tightly managed it was ineffective to individuals?”
Within the business, a feminine runner, carrying a Macintosh tank prime and brandishing a sledgehammer, is chased by police in riot gear. As she enters an meeting corridor, a menacing determine, evoking Massive Brother, is seen on a large display screen delivering a fanatical rant — written by Mr. Hayden utilizing quotations from Mussolini, Mao, Hitler and Goebbels — to a military of slack-jawed drones.
The runner flings her hammer on the display screen, destroying it in an enormous explosion. A voice-over, studying from an onscreen scroll, says: “On January twenty fourth, Apple Laptop will introduce Macintosh. And also you’ll see why 1984 gained’t be like ‘1984.’”
The advert gained a Clio Award for excellence in promoting and the Grand Prix on the Worldwide Promoting Movie Competition in Cannes, France (now the Cannes Lions Worldwide Competition of Creativity). In 1995 it was named the best tv business of all time by Promoting Age. And it helped usher within the period of blockbuster Tremendous Bowl commercials.
“‘1984’ stated that Tremendous Bowl advertisements have been going to be little motion pictures with a intellectual edge on some events,” stated Robert Thompson, the director of the Bleier Heart for Tv and Well-liked Tradition at Syracuse College. “It was so artsy — the factor had components of literature and Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis.’”
The advert was a artistic triumph and helped promote many extra Macintoshes than Apple had anticipated. However when Mr. Hayden and his staff (together with the director Tony Scott, Ridley’s brother) created a dramatic however somber sequel, often known as “Lemmings,” to run throughout the subsequent yr’s Tremendous Bowl, it was a essential flop.
In that spot, which launched the Macintosh Workplace product line, an extended line of blindfolded executives whistling “Heigh Ho,” the jolly off-to-work music from the 1937 Disney movie “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” leap off a cliff as a result of they won’t query enterprise as common. It was perceived as one other shot at IBM.
“I usually remind individuals about ‘Lemmings’ as proof of karmic steadiness,” Mr. Hayden stated with fun in an interview with Forbes journal in 2012.
“What was lacking from ‘Lemmings,’” he added, “was the lady in ‘1984,’ the savior who says, ‘The world could possibly be completely different than this.’”
Stephen Edward Hayden was born on Could 21, 1947, in St. Charles, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis. The youngest of 4 brothers, he moved together with his household to San Jose, Calif., when he was a child. His father, Ralph, was an internist, and his mom, Gertrude, was an opera singer and church organist.
Steve realized to play the cello at a younger age and continued his musical research on the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan and on the College of Southern California, the place he earned a bachelor’s diploma in English in 1968.
Impressed by Volkswagen’s “Suppose Small” marketing campaign — and figuring out that he was not a fantastic cellist — Mr. Hayden entered promoting, first as a junior copywriter for the company McManus, John & Adams in Detroit, the place he labored on the Basic Motors account, after which with a number of businesses, together with Clinton E. Frank, the place he was a bunch artistic director; Foote, Cone & Belding; and Chiat/Day, the place he opened the corporate’s New York workplace in 1979 after which labored on the Apple account as artistic director in Los Angeles.
He left for BBDO/San Francisco shortly earlier than Mr. Jobs resigned from Apple after an influence battle with the corporate’s president, John Sculley. In 1987, he rose to chief artistic officer of BBDO/Los Angeles, the place he was reunited with the Apple account, which had left Chiat/Day. In 1989, he grew to become chairman and chief government of BBDO West, the place for 5 years he led profitable bids for Pizza Hut and different accounts.
“Industrial Revelation,” an Apple advert in 1990 that was overseen by Mr. Hayden, launched an affordably priced Macintosh. In it, photographs of a school professor mesmerizing a category with a lecture about industrial and social change are intercut with clips of Macintoshes being manufactured.
In 1994, Mr. Hayden was recruited to Ogilvy & Mather, the place, in a little bit of irony, he was positioned in command of the IBM account, as president of name companies. He was not closely concerned with the artistic aspect of IBM’s promoting at first, however moved again into that enviornment full time when he was named vice chairman and artistic officer in 2001.
Below his management, Ogilvy created campaigns within the late Nineties that made IBM a extra likable firm and promoted its function in e-business with commercials that turned office issues into easy-to-understand tales.
Shelly Lazarus, Ogilvy & Mather’s former chief government, recalled Mr. Hayden’s means to distill complexity into easy, marketable ideas.
“I sat with him by means of 14 hours of being briefed by Motorola, and on the finish, I stated to him, ‘I’m overwhelmed,’” she stated in an interview. “He stated: ‘It’s not likely sophisticated. It’s intelligence in all places.’ Impulsively, 14 hours have been lowered to 2 phrases. He did that on a regular basis.”
Mr. Hayden was instrumental in creating the quirky and in style “Hey Moto” marketing campaign, which helped rejuvenate Motorola’s picture and cellphone gross sales within the early 2000s. He additionally oversaw campaigns for firms like American Specific and Dove, most famously its “Actual Ladies” advertisements that includes quite a lot of physique varieties.
In an announcement after his dying, Ogilvy stated that Mr. Hayden “was a copywriter at coronary heart who believed within the energy of phrases to maneuver, to influence and to attach,” including, “As he as soon as stated, ‘If you wish to be a fantastic copywriter, please your reader.’”
In 2013, he was elected to the Artistic Corridor of Fame of the One Membership for Creativity, a nonprofit that promotes excellence in promoting.
After retiring in 2011, Mr. Hayden served on the boards of Interlochen and the Damon Runyon Most cancers Analysis Basis.
Along with Ms. Allen, he’s survived by a brother, David. His marriages to Nancy Ferguson and Anne Taylor resulted in divorce.
Mr. Hayden stated he first realized {that a} profession as a author was doable when he was in highschool.
“I had a historical past instructor who wrote on one in every of my papers, ‘With work you may be spectacular or you may simply find yourself a intelligent phrasemaker,’” he recalled in a speech at Interlochen’s graduation handle in 2019. “And I assumed to myself, ‘Individuals pays you for intelligent phrasemaking?’”