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.