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Comment by zaidf | Hacker News Reader

  they make Microsoft look cheap and Apple look 
  premium ... this is not a message Apple is going to be upset by.

Wrong. Apple should be upset and is upset because the market for "premium" computers is a lot smaller than the market for non-premium computers. With this ad, Microsoft is making that premium market even smaller for Apple.

Us geeks can laugh about the ads all day. But for Microsoft, it's a hit.

If WalMart did an ad campaign to steal potential Gucci customers, Gucci should be very worried.

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I'm always surprised how many people think that the introductory solitary sentence "Wrong" is an appropriate response to a comment. Particularly so when the original comment is hypothesizing about someone's opinion of something (whether Apple will be "upset" by these ads).

Not to say the comment is "Wrong." It seems like a decent hypothesis that Apple's marketing strategy is to broaden its customer base, and that Microsoft's ads are hindering that strategy. I do think, though, that part of the reason behind the incivility of online discussions is the tendency of members to express opinions in the form of terse, unqualified statements of fact.

>> "If WalMart did an ad campaign to steal potential Gucci customers, Gucci should be very worried."

How successful would such a campaign be? I'd say not very at all. If I were Gucci, and Walmart were doing a campaign, I wouldn't be worried in the least.

Some people buy based on price, others buy based mainly on quality. Neither will be particularly interested in the other.

  How successful would such a campaign be?

A better question is: how successful would the campaign have to be in order to get Gucci worried? I'd say not a lot because Gucci has a very small market vs. Walmart. If Walmart can get even a small slice, that amounts to relatively large $ revenue loss given Gucci's pricing.

  Neither will be particularly interested in the other.

That is what a good campaign does: flips customers from one category to another.

Wal-Mart is already an anti-brand among the market segment that would buy Gucci. Target may have a better chance, but Wal-Mart is too solidly right-wing, rural, downscale, and outright unpleasant to shop in to really threaten an upscale brand. I don't know Gucci (I'm not upscale enough for it) but most upscale brands are also more durable, while Wal-Mart's products are invariably designed to be cheap and fall apart in a few months so you can go back to Wal-Mart and buy another.

  Wal-Mart is already an anti-brand among the market segment that would buy Gucci.

Kinda like Microsoft is an anti-brand to Apple fanboys. But both Apple and Gucci's customer base have a slice of customers that are on the edge and not necessarily fanboys.

A campaign like Microsoft's is often targeted at a very specific segment of the customers who are convertible(ie. not the Apple fanboys).

I only know this from my marketing analysis class where we studied similar case studies.

"Kinda like Microsoft is an anti-brand to Apple fanboys. But both Apple and Gucci's customer base have a slice of customers that are on the edge and not necessarily fanboys."

These are two fundamentally different markets here. Computers (even Macs) are cheap enough that they aren't as stratified as fashion. A Mac might cost twice as much as a PC (though it really doesn't), but clothing can vary by entire orders of magnitude in price. If Gucci loses customers it will be to a rival premium brand or a midscale brand, not bottom-of-the-barrel Wal-Mart.

The auto industry is similarly stratified, and I understand it a little better than fashion, so let's discuss that. The strata (pre-GM/Chrysler meltdown) were about like this:

Aston Martin Maybach

Bentley Rolls-Royce

--------------------------

BMW Mercedes-Benz Lexus

--------------------------

Audi

--------------------------

Cadillac, Acura

-------------------------- | ------------------

Lincoln | VW, Honda, Toyota

-------------------------- | occupy all three

Mercury, Buick, Chrysler, | strata

upscale Ford/Chevrolet |

(Eddie Bauer Explorer, |

Corvette) |

-------------------------- |

Ford, Chevrolet |

These strata are probably wrong but they're illustrative. I think Audi might be moving closer to the top tier, and I wasn't sure where Rolls Royce belonged but I made a decent guess.

No one says "I'm going to stop driving my Maybach and get a Ford Focus" unless they go bankrupt from buying too many luxury cars. Audi or even Acura could pick off Lexus/BMW/Mercedes drivers though. And someone who stretched too far and got an Audi might get a VW next time. But you're not going to have the lowest tier directly challenge the highest tier. In the PC market, Apple and Microsoft are already adjacent tiers, because there's no room in the market for any tiers above or below them. But the PC market is a lot flatter than other markets.

Don't fall into the trap of labeling people "fanboys".

I do agree though. It follows that once you realize how fantastic most Apple products are, it's likely Microsoft will look like utter garbage in comparison. Just like once you've driven a Ferrari, driving a Ford Focus will probably be a pretty rubbish experience.

"... while Wal-Mart's products are invariably designed to be cheap and fall apart in a few months so you can go back to Wal-Mart and buy another."

Maybe I don't shop enough at Wal-mart's, but I've not experienced that. They do sell some low-cost/low-quality items, but they also have name-brand items, but typically cheaper than, say, Safeway or Walgreen's.

If you're sure it's the same item, that's fine. Then again, they also sell cheaper versions of the same brand (Levi's for instance) that are pretty crap.

I actually went to Wal-Mart yesterday. There are things they do right (logistics) but in general, I don't buy a product at Wal-Mart unless I'm absolutely certain it's completely identical to a product I can get somewhere else, and that I know is durable.

And some people buy based on the brand name of a product being a status symbol. In my mind Gucci is a brand often purchased for that reason. The quality may or may not be higher (admittedly, it often is), but that is secondary to the fact that only those who have "arrived" can afford to purchase that brand. Even on the higher quality products with the elite brand names, often the quality is not high enough to justify the difference in price. But if you are buying it as a status symbol, you probably aren't focusing on quality much anyway.

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