What if an ex-Soviet missile site received an ICBM launch code sent by a computer hacker?  It’s the ultimate computer-systems nightmare, a hard-silo hard sell in "Dr. Strangelove"-like black humor.

A mini-thriller that neatly pivots from the old days of the Cold War scares to a dawning fear of hackers, Network Associates’ Super Bowl debut via Think New Ideas argued to business executives among the audience that digital security was not to be trifled with.

“Dark, but funny,” Ad Age ad critic Bob Garfield wrote at the time. “And effective, for selling system-protection software.”

Network Associates, formed by a merger between Network General and McAfee Associates, changed its name back to McAfee in 2004 and was acquired by Intel in 2010 for nearly $7.7 billion.

BRAND: Network Associates

YEAR: 1998

AGENCY: Think New Ideas

SUPERBOWL: XXXII

QUARTER AIRED: Q2