Wonder of wonders, Microsoft produces a decent set of ads

[jducoeur]

A couple of days ago, Microsoft threw in the towel and pulled the cryptic Seinfeld / Gates ad campaign. It was a tacit admission that leaving the viewing audience with a collective "WTF?" wasn't exactly the image they needed to project. (Oh, they're claiming that they planned it this way all along, but pretty much nobody believes it.)

Yesterday, they unveiled the new ads replacing them, and they're surprisingly well-done. They hit exactly the right note, not even talking about Apple but going headfirst against the PC stereotype that the Mac ads have so brilliantly set up. The implicit message is that most people are "PCs", not "Macs" -- a very smart tactic to use against the cooler-than-thou Mac image that was already starting to get some backlash. They're also genuinely down-to-earth in a way that the head-scratchingly too-clever-by-half Seinfeld campaign wasn't.

All of which seems to show that, in advertising as in everything else, Microsoft *never* produces a decent 1.0 release. But they do tend to eventually get a clue...

Comments

[umbran.livejournal.com]

(Oh, they're claiming that they planned it this way all along, but pretty much nobody believes it.)

Right - except that the withdrawal of the ads has gotten them more press than the Mac ads have ever gotten. I believe that they're clever enough to intend that.

[tpau]

i kind aliekd hte sinefeld adds

[the-nita.livejournal.com]

This is a brilliant series of ads.

[dlevey.livejournal.com]

I'm a PC too. But I'm not a *Microsoft Windows* PC.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Direct personal quote: "Oh look. An ad about nothing. With Seinfeld."

[peregrinning.livejournal.com]

I think Microsoft is riding the hype machine rather well. I think people would be talking about the "I'm a PC" ads far less if they hadn't been preceded by the Seinfeld/Gates ads. I also think that the "I'm a PC" campaign looks better in comparison to the Seinfeld/Gates ads than it would look without those ads.

Maybe Microsoft planned this, maybe not. Personally, I'm doubtful that they planned this switch prior to hiring Seinfeld.

[laurion]

The implicit message is that most people are "PCs", not "Macs"

A message you'll hear them more and more desperately wanting to be true in the next 5 years.

On opening weekend at 'Deis this year, 60% of the new computers put on the network by the incoming freshmen were Apple products. Given that they regular get over 90% of the freshman connected and registered, that's a compelling statistic. Of the remaining 40%, those were fairly well split between machines running Vista and those running XP, with the leanings towards Vista, simply because more new machines come with Vista than XP.

[serakit.livejournal.com]

Does that mean it's hard to get a good computer that runs XP? I will not buy one with Vista...

[laurion]

Increasingly so. Microsoft licensing makes it so there's no difference to the Vendor what they ship with the machine, and most of them would rather be able to advertise the latest and *ahem* "greatest" OS. Some of them will honor a request to ship with XP even if they sell with Vista, makes no difference to them; it's allowed under the EULA, and the maker is getting paid either way. Dell has been doing this, so if you need to get a machine with XP in the near future, go ask them about it.

Fortunately, it's still very easy to get computers that run other excellent operating systems. Of course, with a Mac laptop at home and a Dell laptop with Ubuntu at work, I _might_ be biased.

The audacity of hope

[hudebnik.livejournal.com]

I'm teaching "Computer Programming for Non-Majors" this semester, as I frequently do. In past semesters, there have always been one or two geeky types with Macs, and perhaps one or two artsy types with Macs, among an ocean of Windows users. This semester, based on the students asking "does this program run on a Mac?" or bringing in their laptops for help with installation issues, I estimate that the proportion of Mac users is much higher than in previous years -- say, 25-35%.