Apple used “Think Different” in a major advertising campaign launched in 1997. The campaign marked a renewed effort to define Apple as a creative alternative to mainstream personal-computer brands.
The words appeared in the “Here’s to the Crazy Ones” campaign, which featured black-and-white images of influential figures such as Albert Einstein, Amelia Earhart, and Martin Luther King Jr. The advertisements connected Apple with people who challenged accepted ideas.
The wording is grammatically unusual because “think differently” would be the conventional adverbial form. That deliberate phrasing helped make the line memorable and echoed IBM’s earlier “Think” campaign, a relationship that has led to frequent discussion of the slogan’s wording.
Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 after the company acquired NeXT. The campaign was created by the advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day and ran during a major period of corporate restructuring.