A superstition is any belief or practice considered by non-practitioners to be irrational or supernatural, attributed to fate or magic, perceived supernatural influence, or fear of that which is unknown. Superstitious behavior arises when the delivery of a reinforcer or punisher occurs close together in time (temporal contiguity) with an independent behavior. Therefore, the behavior is accidentally reinforced or punished, increasing the likelihood of that behavior occurring again. For example, you walk under a ladder and a minute later you trip and fall. It is easy to attribute your accident to “bad luck” and the irrelevant ladder. The reason an association is easy to form is because your cultural belief that walking under a ladder will bring bad luck is positively reinforced by your fall that occurred soon after walking under the ladder.
immersed. Another way that brands can tell stories is by “referring to, or borrowing from, stories that we already know” (Fog, 2004:168). Depending on the consumer’s knowledge, a brand can familiarise itself with an already told ‘story’ or ‘universe’, instantly making a connection with the consumer. This use of storytelling is evidently used in Apple’s 1984 campaign for the launch of Macintosh (see fig.4). This advertisement campaign was conceived by the ad agency Chiat/Day (now known as TBWA/Chiat/Day) which was the same agency that curated the silhouette campaign (Kattan, 2012). This campaign uses George Orwell’s classic, ‘1984’, to adapt the universe already created for the launch of the new Macintosh. The science fiction novel, 1984, “describes a totalitarian society where the party controls all information and brainwashes the populace to adhere to the demands of the system” (Fog, 2004:168). People in Orwell’s ‘universe’ are under constant supervision and in fear ‘Big Brother’, who is always watching.
Figure 4. Apple (1984)
The scene is set with a feel of doom and despair, with ‘soldiers’ marching all dressed in grey with dark surrounding’s, almost like a prison. Once everyone is sat down, they start being lectured by, what looks to be an authoritarian figure. The screen quickly snaps between this and a young, female athlete with a huge sledge hammer being chased by “mind police” (Fog, 2004:168) (see fig.5). I watched a video where Steve jobs speaks about the release of this ad campaign, and in this he talks about Apple’s rival company at that specific time, IBM (Apple keynote-the ‘1984’ ad introduction, 2011). This suggests to me that IBM are being described as the authoritarian figure on the screen, controlling the population as they try to “dismiss the personal computer, as it is too small for serious computing” (Apple keynote-the ‘1984’ ad introduction, 2011). This means that apple must be the youthful female athlete dressed up in full colour, which could be seen as a personification of apple as a company. In terms of the consumer, they’re part in this ‘story’ would be the ‘soldiers’ being told what to do by the authoritarian figure (IBM).
Figure 5. Apple (1984)
Toward the end of the video, the youthful athlete lunges her sledgehammer at the giant screen, smashing it leaving a look of shock and relief on the faces of the general public (see fig.6). The question I asked was why female? The fact the young, youthful athlete was a female suggests to me that Apple where seen as the underdog by IBM, which shows never underestimate the underdog. The essential characters to an effective story are the protagonist and the antagonist; hero and villain” (Kattan, 2012). In this particular campaign, the hero and villain are clear. The hero being apple, and the villain being IBM. the people being saved are perceived to be the general public, this makes the consumer feel like they themselves are being saved by Apple. This gives the consumer an emotional connection to the brand that they may have never had before this point.
