Apple's Think Different ad campaign is famous for bringing the company and its products to a new audience between 1997 and 2002, but now it's been retooled and used in a whole new way.
Forget Think Different, we're now being told to Eat Differently in an attempt to promote plant-based diets and persuade people to stop eating meat.
But beyond simply re-working Apple's slogan, the people behind the Eat Differently campaign are also using Steve Jobs' likeness to help promote their course.
Eat Differently
This new ad campaign was first shared by VegNews in a post that now doesn't seem to be available — here's a Wayback Machine link — and Jobs is far from the only famous plant eater used to promote it.
According to that report, Eat Differently is a new LLC and a self-described “public service resource”. As part of that it's paid to have 29 billboards put up across San Diego with Jobs, Paul McCartney, Greta Thunberg, and Cesar Chavez some of those included.
"In the 90’s, Apple launched one of the most prolific and poignant advertising campaigns in modern history. The “Think Different” campaign highlighted luminaries throughout history and correlated their extraordinary “thinking” with brilliance," Eat Differently states. "We noticed that many of these luminaries featured in the campaign had a common thread—they ate differently."
Eat Differently says that it is paying homage "to icons past and present who invite us to think differently, eat differently, and become part of a movement that propels humanity towards a brighter tomorrow" in the spirit of the original campaign.
Eats Differently quotes Jobs specifically, who once said in a keynote “the dairy industry tried for 20 years to convince you that milk was good for you. It’s a lie, but they tried anyway.” He went on to say that the "Got milk?" marketing campaign was far more effective because they were focusing on the absence of the product.
However, it'll now be interesting to see what Apple thinks of all of this. In a world where Apple is trying to trademark the use of an apple in logos, we can't imagine it taking kindly to a previous ad campaign being reused in this way. The Eat Differently logo even features a green apple with a fork.
As for what comes next, we'll have to wait and see if there's any response from Apple or the Jobs estate surrounding Eat Differently and its ad campaign. It'll also be interesting to see if any of the other people whose likenesses are used were aware of that before these ads went live.
