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Cheryl Berman takes you inside one of the greatest brand manifestos ever written β Apple's 'Think Different' β and shows you line by line how it embodies every quality of legendary brand writing.
To understand why Think Different was so extraordinary, you have to understand the moment it was born into.
It was 1997. Apple was twelve weeks from bankruptcy. Steve Jobs had just returned to the company he co-founded after more than a decade away. The product line was a mess. The brand was confused. The world had largely written Apple off as a relic of the early personal computing era, outmaneuvered by Microsoft and irrelevant to the future.
Into that moment, Jobs and the team at TBWA\Chiat\Day didn't launch a product campaign. They didn't talk about specs or price or market share. They wrote a manifesto.
And it changed everything.
Pro Tip: The best time to write a manifesto is when a brand is at a crossroads β when it needs to declare not just what it is, but what it intends to become. A manifesto is as much a promise to the future as it is a statement of the present.
Here is the text of Think Different, as it was read in the original television film by the actor Richard Dreyfuss:
"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."
Read it again. Slowly. Out loud if you can.
Notice what it doesn't say. It doesn't mention a computer. It doesn't mention Apple. It doesn't mention price, performance, design, or any product feature whatsoever. It mentions people. Specifically, it mentions a type of person β the misfit, the rebel, the troublemaker β and it declares, on behalf of Apple, that these are the people the brand believes in.
"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers."
From the very first line, this manifesto is about people β not products. And not just any people. The people who have always felt like they didn't quite fit. The ones who saw the world differently and were told that was a problem. This is deeply human writing. It speaks to a universal experience of not belonging β and reframes it as a superpower.
The genius is in the specificity. Not 'innovative people' or 'creative thinkers' β misfits. rebels. troublemakers. Words with edges. Words that feel true.
"They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo."
This is a bold position. Apple is explicitly aligning itself with people who break rules and reject convention. In 1997, this was a declaration of war against the dominant computing culture β against Microsoft, against IBM, against the beige-box corporate world. It's a position that will make some people uncomfortable. That's exactly the point.
Key Insight: A manifesto that tries to appeal to everyone will resonate with no one. The courage to exclude β to say 'this brand is not for everyone' β is what makes the people it is for feel genuinely chosen.
"You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them."
This is Apple's voice β confident, a little provocative, with a dry wit hiding underneath the grandeur. The rhythm of 'quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them' has a musicality to it. The pivot to 'the only thing you can't do is ignore them' has a quiet swagger. This doesn't sound like any other tech company. It sounds like Apple.
"Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."
This is the purpose statement. Apple exists to give tools to the people who want to change the world. Not to sell computers. Not to compete with Microsoft. To arm the rebels. That's a purpose worth believing in. That's a purpose worth building a company around.
The Think Different manifesto became the creative brief for everything Apple did for the next decade. Every product launch, every campaign, every piece of communication was filtered through the question: Does this serve the crazy ones?
The iMac. The iPod. The iPhone. Every one of these products was, in a sense, a physical manifestation of the manifesto. They were tools for the misfits and the rebels. They were designed to help people change the world.
The manifesto didn't just launch a campaign. It repositioned an entire company β from a struggling computer maker into a cultural movement. And it did it with 97 words.
This is what a manifesto can do. Not just describe a brand. Not just inspire a campaign. Define a company's reason for being in terms so human, so powerful, so specific, and so purposeful that everything that follows flows naturally from it.
In the next lesson, we're going to look at more examples β and then we're going to start building your own.
The manifesto was developed by the TBWA\Chiat\Day team working with Steve Jobs after his return to Apple in 1997. Jobs was deeply involved in shaping the language and the vision. It's a reminder that the best brand manifestos come from the intersection of great creative talent and a leader who truly believes in what the brand stands for.
Because the manifesto wasn't selling a product β it was declaring a worldview. Apple understood that if they could make people believe in what the brand stood for, the products would sell themselves. This is the fundamental insight behind manifesto thinking: lead with belief, and commerce follows.