Atari ST Advertising
The Atari 520ST was introduced in 1985 just one short year after Jack Tramiel acquired Atari from Warner Communications. This new 16-bit computer was an amazing combination of power, performance and low price.
In fact, their original slogan was “Power without the Price” and it truly was a great slogan that still resonates today. However, a cool slogan can’t sell computers all by itself.
In its previous incarnation, Atari was known for having a lavish advertising budget. However, this new Atari was a much smaller and leaner company. Lavish advertising was not in the cards.
For the most part, Atari seemed to feel that word of mouth about the ST’s incredible value would help sell them. Although there are many companies that get by without any significant advertising today (Tesla is a notable example), I don’t think that was nearly as common in the 80s.
This is not to say that they did not do any advertising. They absolutely ran print ads in many computer magazines. Let’s look at a few of them.
Considering it is July, let’s start with this patriotic ad for the Atari ST. This is the first Atari ST ad I ever saw and it certainly has a theme!
This ad touts “the new” Atari, the “Power without the Price slogan and the low $799 (about $2500 in 2026) price of the 520ST (with a monochrome monitor and single-side floppy). It’s hard to overstate how amazing that price was in the summer of 1985.
The next ad that I saw in several places really focused in on the price, pointing out how much more expensive other computers cost.
That ad keeps the slogan, but drops “the new” part. It’s now just Atari. That is a pretty compelling table, but it is showing retail prices for the IBM PC, Macintosh and Amiga. It is fun that the Amiga is shown just as an outline, implying that it was not yet readily available.
This next Atari 1040ST ad has a great headline, “Introducing technology so advanced, it’s affordable”. It’s a little wordy, but I like it.
As an aside, I really miss this style of advertising with lots of copy text describing the produce. Ads today have almost no details. It’s all vibes and hype.
This ad is a bit different. Rather than highlighting the computers, it focuses on the 3rd party software market, which is probably more important. After all, a computer is not all that useful to regular people if there’s no good software for it.
This is probably my favorite ad and one I had a really hard time finding. This photo is actually from an eBay auction listing I found.
This two pay ad for the 1040ST proclaims “It’s like getting the power and speed of a Ferrari for the price of a Ford.” I love the car comparison. It has another table comparing specs and pricing to the newly released 1040ST with It’s 1MB of RAM and double-sided floppy.
I don’t recall many big full-color ST ads after this. There were a few here and there, but for the most part, Atari kept things more low-key, such as with these low-budget quarter-page ads for the 1040ST.
What were some of your favorite Atari ST ads that you remember seeing?
Gotta say, the initial "power without the price" tact seemed initially effective, at least until Commodore trotted out the Amiga 500, which rendered Atari's argument null and void.
That said, neither Atari or Commodore had much of a shot - Apple barely made a blip and Atari/Commodore fought for the consumer/gamer/budget oriented home market while the whole world was slowly adopting MS-DOS because of the cheap clones.
I still think the fact that Jack got Atari with a functional, complete and damned good product in the ST line so quickly speaks volumes to the man's ability to get things done.
I have a copy of Keyboard Magazine which definitely has full color, full page ads for the ST as well. Would be interesting to see how late those ran since that's where the system really stuck in the US.