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My appleII Notes-15

My AppleII Notes-15

00/12/1 Apple II: First catalog, first magazine advertisement


　 First advertisement: BYTE June 1977 issue

最初のApple IIに関する雑誌広告は、BYTE誌1977年6月号に登場する。 The first magazine advertisement on Apple II appears in the June 1977 issue of BYTE magazine. Apple II which debuted at the 1st West Coast Computer Fair (WCCF) held at the Civic Auditorium in San Francisco on April 16th and 17th of that year entrusted their marketing to Regis Mckenna Agency. Among the BYTE magazines at the time many hardware advertisements were posted. The large full-page advertisement of an Apple Computer depicting a man using his Apple in the dining area while his wife cooks, is impressive.

Regis Mckenna's public relations strategy

The first catalog: April 1977 (Refer to Brochure-1 )

 When I was looking at the Apple II related website, I found an interesting story regarding early advertisements and catalogs by Kelly who was a former McKenna employee and whom has continue running his own advertising company called Kelly Advertising Company for a long time.

The contents are as follows:

· The Regis Mckenna company received a visit from Woz and Jobs around the beginning of 1977 and they demonstrated the possibilities of the prototype Apple II using The Game of Life, in color. It was then that the company started to be responsible for Apple's PR strategy.
 · Their first mission was to make pamphlets and advertisements for the first WCCF that was to be held from April 16.
· In place of the logo designed, that had been designed by Ronald Wayne until then, Rob Janoff who was art director at Regis McKenna designs a logo featuring an apple that has been bitten into.

· It was originally monochrome, but Jobs instructed them to add six horizontal color stripes depicting the impressiveness of the Apple II's color output.

· Regis McKenna produces pamphlets and advertisements. The brochure arrived a little behind schedule for the first WCCF and print was still wet.

Replaced advertisement photo


　BYTE magazine: December 1977 		· Although the first advertisement was published in BYTE magazine, Jobs received a letter of protest from a woman living in Oregon. The content suggested that this ad was sexual.
(It seems that the part where the woman was holding the controller in front of the monitor and the man was pointing his finger towards the woman became the object of the protest.
- Soon after, the picture of the advertisement was replaced with a picture of the two working in front of monitor. By the way, it is said that the young man sitting in front of the monitor closest to us was Mr. Kelley, who was an employee of Regis Mckenna at that time.


(Mr. Kelly in the photo on the right)


 Ensuing BYTE magazine advertisements

The two-page spread advertisement of BYTE magazine continued, but it was replaced with one of new layout in July of 1978. Originally, Apple II was diverged from the hobbyist computer market to the home appliance market as a "Home Computer", but realized that its marketing strategy was premature and instead placed emphasis on "Programmable Calculator Market". For this reason, the advertising strategy was redirected from the "Home Computer" market to "Personal Computer" market.

The Disk II drive appeared in July 1978, we can see Red and Blue Book manuals surrounding the Apple II in the advertisement of a Byte magazine. From this advertisement it can be seen that both software and manuals had improved dramatically one year on since product release.


　BYTE July 1978 issue


参考資料 Kelly Advertising and Marketing "Birth of an Industory 1976-77 Reference: Kelly Advertising and Marketing "Birth of an Industry 1976-77 (Http://Kelleyad.Com/index.Html )
                 Dune's Apple][Page (Http://Www.Kotoba.Ne.Jp/~dune/index.Cgi?K=ap2 )