Source
Rob Siltanen, "The Real Story Behind Apple's 'Think Different' Campaign," Forbes, December 14, 2011
Editorial Note
This is the closing line of Apple's 1997 "Think Different" campaign — the "Here's to the Crazy Ones" manifesto — and not a sentence Steve Jobs wrote or spoke as his own. The documented author is copywriter Rob Siltanen of the agency TBWA\Chiat\Day, who drafted the manifesto (inspired by Dead Poets Society) with revisions from fellow copywriter Ken Segall and under creative chief Lee Clow; the aired commercial was narrated by Richard Dreyfuss, though an unaired version voiced by Jobs also exists. Siltanen laid out this account in a 2011 Forbes essay, and he has specifically pushed back on the suggestion in Walter Isaacson's biography that Jobs co-wrote the spot. The line became fused to Jobs because he was Apple's returning CEO, championed the campaign, hand-picked its featured icons, and recorded that alternate narration — but championing and approving copy is not authoring it. Because a specific, credible alternative origin is documented and named, the attribution to Jobs is a misattribution to the famous face of the ad rather than to the writer behind the words.