Revolution in The Valley [Paperback]

part five

Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.

Pablo Picasso

Can We Keep the Skies Safe?

January 1984

Burrell and I get our pictures in Newsweek

The marketing campaign that launched the original Macintosh was almost as imaginative and innovative as the product itself. It included a carefully orchestrated press blitz, masterminded by Regis McKenna, the legendary Silicon Valley marketing guru whose business card read “Regis McKenna, Himself,” and his team of bright, young female assistants, who we nicknamed the “Rejettes”: Andy Cunningham, Jane Anderson, and Katie Cadigan.

The basic idea was to create a perception of the Macintosh introduction as an epochal event by garnering as much attention as we could from every possible venue, all coordinated to appear around the January 1984 launch. Because some of the monthly magazines had more than three months lead time, the press briefings and interviews began in October 1983 with Byte magazine (see “The Mythical Man-Year” on page 179), and became more numerous with each passing week.

One of the most sought-after goals of the press campaign was to obtain a cover story from either Time or Newsweek during launch week. Regis and his team were experts at the delicate dance of courtship that such an endeavor required, since journalistic ethics mandated that the cover could not be bought or promised ahead of time. In mid-December, after Newsweek interviewed Steve and some of the design team, we heard they were potentially ...