Apples to Oranges: Think Different, Create Alone

Apple’s marketing under Steve Jobs often centered on collective identity, belonging, and collaboration. This is vastly different from the Shot on iPhone campaign launched in 2015, which engages “community” by featuring a collection of users’ work, ultimately producing a false portrayal of collaborative creation. Under Jobs, campaigns like Think Different (1997) positioned Apple users as part of a shared lineage of thinkers, innovators, and disruptors. The Think Different campaign did not require users to submit content; instead, the ad was authored by Apple, while its meaning was co-created with its audience.

Shot on iPhone works because contribution replaces belonging. Isolation becomes the condition that oils the system. People are encouraged to create alone, survive alone, and succeed alone—principles contemporary society increasingly relies on. Does art imitate life, or has life learned how to perform like art?

Let’s dissect Think Different. The ad’s invocation, “Here’s to the crazy ones”, positions the subject as a collective rather than centering the individual. We see figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali, Amelia Earhart, Albert Einstein, and Pablo Picasso, and recognize them as “the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers.” The campaign banks on a shared cultural archive, collective reverence, and the viewer’s willingness to place themselves within that lineage. This was a risky move because it depended on cultural literacy.

The ad then reframes these figures’ genius as “the ones who see things differently.” The audience is invited to decide whether they, too, can reject conformity and celebrate divergence. The campaign’s ultimate claim asserts that cultural change comes from belief, not compliance: “Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world… are the ones who do.” This shared authorship is rooted in risk, meaning, and identification, consequently it was powerful enough to help save Apple from collapse because it required a collective buy-in and the possibility of being changed by others.