Shortly after Mr. Jobs stepped down from the CEO position in August, Steve Hayden, the current vice-chairman of the ad agency Ogilvy, wrote a guest column for the trade magazine Advertising Age in which he described his experience as the copywriter on the 1984 ad while working at the ad agency Chiat\Day. After Mr. Jobs had seen a rough-cut of the commercial, recalled Mr. Hayden, he realized it would create a demand for information about the Macintosh, and he instructed the ad agency to produce a 20-page magazine-style insert. Told there wasn’t sufficient time to do so, he replied simply: “Just do it.”
For decades, Apple positioned itself as the creative rebel fighting against the authoritarian rulers who would crush their spirit. But in recent years other companies have borrowed a page from the Apple playbook to depict it as a malevolent power who could snuff out innovation in the quest for its own growth. During this year’s Super Bowl broadcast, Motorola aired a commercial for its Android-powered Xoom tablet that inverted Apple’s famous spot, depicting a grey civilization of unthinking masses kept anesthetized by iPod-like devices.
Even Apple has unwittingly contributed to the sense that it has become too arrogant for its own good, with TV spots that declare snootily, “If you don’t have an iPhone, you don’t have an iPhone.” The simplicity of that message backfired as critics used it to mock the company on blogs and video posts.
For the moment, of course, the critics have quieted their voices, though some grumbled quietly about media overkill in the coverage of Mr. Jobs’ passing.
But in death, as in life, Mr. Jobs made it easy to spread the word. Wednesday evening’s news was communicated in the company’s signature minimalist aesthetic, with a black-and-white photo of the company’s co-founder in his signature black mock turtleneck, posted on apple.com. Within hours, printouts of that same page were appearing in locations outside Apple stores and at impromptu shrines to Mr. Jobs, from New York to Palo Alto to Beijing.
Editor's Note: An earlier online version of this article incorrectly reported that Samsung made the Xoom. The error has been rectified.
