Think different.

“Think different.” is best known not as an anonymous aphorism but as the slogan of Apple Computer’s “Think Different” advertising campaign launched in 1997, during Steve Jobs’s return to the company. The phrase appeared prominently in print ads and a celebrated television commercial (“Here’s to the crazy ones…”) that positioned Apple as the brand for creative nonconformists and innovators. Although it has since circulated widely as a standalone motivational maxim, its cultural prominence and recognizability largely stem from this late-1990s campaign rather than from a single earlier literary or philosophical source.

The slogan urges a deliberate break from conventional assumptions: to approach problems from an unconventional angle, value originality, and resist default conformity. Its punch comes from its brevity and imperative mood, framing creativity as an active choice rather than a trait. The slightly ungrammatical phrasing (“different” rather than “differently”) also functions rhetorically: it sounds like a brand voice—terse, modern, and memorable—reinforcing the idea that innovation often involves bending rules, even linguistic ones. In popular usage, it has become a general call to independent thought and imaginative risk-taking.

“Think Different” (capitalized as the campaign title); “Think differently.”; “Think different. Think Apple.”