Login
Apple becomes first brand ever inducted into the Creative Hall of Fame
After 65 years of honoring individual designers, copywriters, directors, and other creative leaders, The One Club for Creativity is breaking its own tradition. Apple has been named the first brand inducted into a newly created Brand Hall of Fame, part of the organization’s long-running Creative Hall of Fame.
The honor, announced Monday, recognizes more than 50 years of work in design, branding, and communications. The One Club said Apple was chosen for a sustained record of creative excellence, bold ideas, and cultural impact — not a single campaign.
“It’s an incredible honor for Apple to join the Creative Hall of Fame, because imagination is woven into everything we do,” outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement. “It drives how we innovate, how we design, and how we work every day to empower people everywhere to create their own extraordinary things. We’re grateful to be recognized by an institution that has championed creative voices for so many generations.”
The Creative Hall of Fame dates to 1961, when advertising pioneer Leo Burnett became its first inductee. Its roll later expanded to figures such as Walt Disney, Andy Warhol, Annie Leibovitz, Gordon Parks, and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who was inducted posthumously in 2012. Until now, membership had been reserved for people.
That changes at a black-tie gala on September 16th at Capitale in New York. Apple will be presented with the new brand honor at the same dinner that inducts this year’s individual laureates. Tickets start at $1,250, and the evening doubles as a fundraiser for The One Club, a nonprofit that promotes advertising and design worldwide.
The organization said it created the Brand Hall of Fame to recognize companies with a longstanding commitment to creative work. Every two years, it plans to review more than a century of winners from The One Show and the Art Directors Club’s ADC Annual Awards, then put a shortlist to a vote of its national and international boards. Apple is the first name through that process.
The case for Apple rests on a catalog that has become advertising shorthand. The list cited by The One Club and subsequent reports includes Ridley Scott’s 1984 Super Bowl spot for the original Macintosh; the late-1990s “Think Different” campaign; the early-2000s iPod silhouette ads; and the “Get a Mac” series, better known as “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC.” Later work includes “Shot on iPhone,” now in its 11th year; “Privacy. That’s iPhone”; Emmy-winning holiday films such as “Misunderstood” and “Fuzzy Feelings”; accessibility spots including “I Am the Greatest” and “I’m Not Remarkable”; and the HomePod film “Welcome Home.”
The club also looked beyond commercials. Apple’s visual language, it said, runs through product design, packaging, and retail stores, not only television and digital ads. Much of the advertising itself was produced internally and with Chiat/Day and, later, TBWA\Media Arts Lab — one of the industry’s longest-running brand-agency partnerships. Apple and TBWA\Media Arts Lab have twice won The One Show’s Penta Pencil, in 2017 and again in 2026, an award for outstanding work over a five-year span.
The brand honor arrives alongside a conventional Hall of Fame class. This year’s individual inductees include Rosie Arnold, known for work including Levi’s campaigns in the U.K.; Janet Champ, the Wieden+Kennedy copywriter behind Nike’s “If You Let Me Play”; John C Jay, whose résumé includes Nike and Uniqlo; Caroline R. Jones, the first Black woman to become a vice president at a major U.S. agency; Joyce King Thomas, a key creative force behind Mastercard’s “Priceless”; and Piyush Pandey, often described as a founding figure of modern Indian advertising. Michael Conrad, co-founder of the Berlin School of Creative Leadership, will enter the Educators Hall of Fame.
The timing is not accidental. Apple marked its 50th anniversary in 2026, and the company has continued to collect advertising prizes this year, including recent Webby Awards for an Apple Pay campaign and a Lionel Messi spot for Apple TV. The Hall of Fame honor is different in kind: it treats the brand itself, rather than one film or one season of work, as the achievement.
MacDailyNews Take: Whether other companies follow Apple into the Brand Hall of Fame will depend on the next nomination cycle. For now, the institution that spent six decades celebrating the people behind the work has decided that one company’s body of work belongs in the same room.
Please help support MacDailyNews — and enjoy subscriber-only articles, comments, chat, and more — by subscribing to our Substack: macdailynews.substack.com. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
The post Apple becomes first brand ever inducted into the Creative Hall of Fame appeared first on MacDailyNews.
