New Microsoft Commercials Are Live | Hacker News Reader

New Microsoft Commercials Are Live

techcrunch.com

25 pointsnickb23 comments

This is a bit of a change in direction.

Normally, it's only the little guy that can recognise competitors in advertising. Apple can point at Microsoft because they are the challenger.

For an established dominant player like Microsoft to directly reference Apple, then it can backfire - it's giving Apple credibility and legitimacy to Microsoft's own customers. e.g. "If Microsoft want to respond to Apple, then Apple must be threatening them - maybe Apple is doing something right?".

So whilst these ads seem ok, there might be more subtle implications.

If your competitor bashes you in their ads and they have a valid point, there is nothing you can really do to fight back. But, if your competitor's ads are based on unfounded or misleading claims, you can get big points if you respond in a clever manner. That is exactly what is going on here. Apple's underlying message is that cool people use macs and boring people use PCs. Well, it isn't hard to find a bunch of cool people that use PCs to refute that claim. The hard part is packaging them up, and I think Microsoft did a good job with that here.

The other thing is that Microsoft can kill the PC vs. Mac commercials simply by drowning them out. The Bill+Jerry ads were a few minutes after the PC vs. Mac ads during the same show on ABC (or NBC, I forget). If they do the same thing, where stations run 1 PC vs. Mac commercial followed by two "I'm a PC" commercials, they will deflate the PC vs. Mac message, and actually kind of turn it around to Microsoft's favor.

Plus, as people get tired of "I'm a PC" they will get tired of PC vs. Mac too because there is such an obvious association there. Even if people have the "I'm a PC" ads, they still serve a valuable purpose.

As for the specific claims that the PC vs. Mac commercials make, I'm not sure it makes sense for Microsoft to counter all of them. But, some of them definitely could be countered. For example, the "it just works" ad is easy to counter. Just fine some hardware that has drivers for Windows and doesn't have drivers for a Mac. Then, have a commercial where you have 10 people with 10 different brands of computers. Have the first 9 plug the device into PCs and say "It works!" Then, have the 10th plug the device into a mac and (insert clever imagery here). This is not hard to do, because in reality more stuff "just works" with PCs than it does with Macs.

Is it possible there is no hope for MicroSoft? It just seems that competing with Apple the way that they are is the wrong move somehow. Apple has a massively powerful emotional branding philosophy in play, shouldn't MicroSoft use it's rapidly dwindling might to chase and conquer a different market? They even seem a bit late to the cloud computing party as well, sure they are involved but they let so many other firms get a foothold. It's as if Apple and cloud computing platforms are doing to Microsoft what MicroSoft did to IBM.. Am I nuts here?

Apple's annual revenue is ~$20B. Microsoft's is ~$51B with significantly higher profit margins.

Don't you think that "no hope" is kind of a stretch?

There's a long tech history of companies making record profits just before they go out of business.

It happens when they hone their product during the adolescence of a disruptive innovation. Microsoft is staring down the twin barrels of linux and SaaS. Its products have pretty much maxed out their potential (read: they've run out of runway), but are neither free nor services. It's a different game. [edit also, wine works amazingly well]

Meanwhile, Apple heads the disruptive innovation of iPods. They'll need another disruption soon though. Tech demands it.

Microsoft's SaaS approach is compelling even if it is late in getting to market.

Want hosted email? They'll host it and it is guaranteed to be 100% compatible with Outlook/Exchange because it is Exchange. Want hosted groupware, etc.? They'll host it. Change your mind and want to host it yourself? Okay, they'll sell you the same software that the hosted solution is running on, to run on your own hardware. I bet they will eventually even help you migrate it onto hardware that you can purchase from them, so that you have nothing to set up.

In contrast, none of their competitors have 100% Exchange compatibility because they are not running Exchange. Very few of their competitors let you change your mind and painlessly switch from cloud-hosted to self-hosted and back as you see fit. And, most of their competitors don't have any solution for hybrid systems where self-hosted applications and data are automatically replicated onto the cloud, or where the cloud can be used to incrementally add capacity for applications you are currently hosting yourself.

Wine might work well but it doesn't matter, because only people who don't have any money will use it. Microsoft traditionally doesn't compete for customers that don't have any money, and I think that is a smart approach. They cash checks while everybody else prays that people will click their tiny classified ads. When they release Internet Explorer 9 with Adblocker their competitors' revenue will go to zero.

I'm a PC and I sell fish.

Sounds like "I'm selfish". Blunder?

Oh, good, more stories about Microsoft commercials!

I know when I get together with hackers, there's nothing we like more than watching TV commercials, hearing what tech bloggers think about TV commercials, and talking about TV commercials. Sometimes it keeps us up all night!

Having stories about advertisements on the front page also makes up for the lack of other ads, which has always made this site look kind of geeky and 'small potatoes' to me. Corporate marketing on the front page means we've arrived into the mainstream, finally!

And did you catch Eva Longoria Parker in the ad? Wouldn't kick her out of bed to check email on a MacBook Air, that's for sure! Isn't the wait for the season premiere of Desperate Housewives killing you? Me too!

I, for one, welcome News.YC's new video viral marketing overloads.

Have you seen this one yet:

http://frinko.com/you-might-have-to-watch-this-twice.html

I'm confused. "I'm a pissy" was it? What are these ads for?

Come on Microsoft, make some cool software and advertise it. Remember? writing cool software? innovating?

Do you heard about Haskell or F#? They a related to Microsoft research without any marketing crap, I really appreciate that.

I hated the Seinfeld commercials, but I like these replacement commercials. They make sense in trying to break the PC's stereotype, as opposed to the garbage they put out before which can be summed up as: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/9/15/ (language may be nsfw depending on how stuck up your company is)

...but i'm not a PC.

oh well, still pretty decent commercials and any response to the mac guy ads is better than nothing.

I don't know if thats true. For Microsoft, a company that's so big and should have so much to say about their new product, a reactionary approach to a smaller competitor seems somehow wrong.

That, and:

http://www.theangrydrunk.com/2008/09/19/im-microsoft-and-i-d...

Microsoft is digging itself into a hole, 'twould seem.

Hmm, these remind me a lot of political commercials. Rather than discuss the features and merits (issues and policies) over competitors, they concentrate on identifying with the customer ("Here's a candidate you could have a beer with!"). Apple commercials are annoying, but at least they have substance.

Unbearable - cool people in general don't go around telling everybody how cool they are. I would have thought elitist marketing companies would know such things.

So... "Apple: Einstein and Gandhi would have loved us" doesn't count?

This just in...

Apple has changed their advertising strategy: Justin Long is now going to call himself Safari and John Hodgman will be referring to himself as Internet Explorer.

I like them! (and I'm a Mac/Linux head)

The slogan is odd, in a life without walls windows wouldn't exist .

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