“The Mojave Experiment:” Bad Science, Bad Marketing
wilshipley.com
wilshipley.com
The people who make their decisions based on what Dell defaults to are going to end up with Vista - because that is their only option now. There was a time when they had a choice between XP or Vista with a new computer, now you have a choice between Vista or no computer.
So this campaign is aimed at the people who actually make an informed decision and influence large purchases - basically IT guys since businesses are the ones still using XP/2000. Insulting their intelligence is not an effective strategy.
This marketing campaign will resonate well with every person who has concluded that Vista sucks without ever giving it a chance. I have a feeling that is a massive target audience.
I don't think it's because of apple ads at all. Most people have an early adopter or someone who recently bought a new machine in their circle of friends. And a big chunk of those people have had problems.
So most people are 1-2 steps removed from someone who doesn't like vista (my dad says copying files is slow, for instance). So I suspect this marketing won't even really work that well. The issue isn't whether vista is prettier or "faster", the issue is whether vista will be broken on my machine.
It had other foibles as well and managed to crash due to driver conflicts and other issues. All in all, I much more satisfied being back on XP even though I'm missing out on some of Vista's new eye candy.
When it's an ad, well, it's just an ad. I don't think those Apple ads with John Hodgman are going to be published in any scientific journals any time soon, but they're still great ads.
I'd say this is an effective ad. I can't think of a better way to get the message to people that Vista is getting a worse reputation than it deserves.