Windows 7 is reduced to rainbows and unicorns
latimes.com
latimes.com
-- I have a request to make to bloggers and journalists: please don't use this analogy unless you are in fact screwing your computers as it makes it difficult for me to take you seriously. "OS agnostic," has been around for a while and is clearer.
It's especially annoying as he has a real point to make and the most noticeable thing about the article is what looks like a ribald joke.
He said that in his mind they're making a mistake by trying to address Apple, because Apple can play better on their terms than Microsoft can. So from that point of view, this new ad is more effective, because it's stopped legitimatizing Apple's Get A Mac campaign.
I still think that CP+B is over their heads in this campaign. They do great for Burger King, where they're competing with equal brands, but Apple has a better brand than Microsoft, and so "edgy" isn't cutting it for them. Chiat has a powerful set of ads, so it's not like they're playing against a void.
Microsoft's campaign exhibits a lot of diversity - ethnicities, ages, roles. Apple's poster boy (singular) is a smart-alec white hipster. I didn't particularly care for the 'laptop hunter' ads but one of them included the line 'I guess I'm just not cool enough for a mac', which I thought was a clever dig at the snob appeal and pricing of the Mac products. It's also, I suspect, aimed at offsetting the grumbles of nativists about Microsoft's public support for H1-B workers - though perhaps I'm attributing too much vision to CP&B there.
More importantly, most of the commercials emphasize what people do with their computers - they run busineses (tattoo guy), study or make movies (laptop hunters), or grow up doing creative things (Kylie, the terminally cute little girl). The Mac guy just stands around saying how much better he is because he's a Mac - he doesn't actually do anything. So the CP&B ads mostly establish a direct connection between customer's goals and the product they can use to achieve them (Windows and the computer it runs on).
The Apple 'tech' commercials (this is a Mac/iPhone - look, you can do this, this and this) are much better in that regard, but they do present a solution and invite the viewer to consider how it might solve a problem or ease their routine. I think think it's interesting that the MS ads are built around the idea of the user articulating the goal first and then exercising or expressing a choice to do it with a PC. In narrative terms, they establish character first and then offer (their) technology as an aid to that.
Finally, the MS ads show Windows running on a variety of different hardware - premium to be sure, but that variety carries connotations of choice, flexibility, and mutual confidence among manufacturers in Windows, whereas Apple is an all-or-nothing proposition. You want to go Mac, well say goodbye to your existing hardware whether or not it works...not an easy decision in recessionary times.
I'm actually pretty impressed with CP&B. Even the Shoe Circus commercial with Seinfeld was clever: by playing off the dorkiness and incomprehensibility, and ending with an image of a departing bill Gates (but with a hint that new things were in the pipeline), it effectively leveraged the existing preconceptions about Microsoft and used them as a pivot to direct attention towards what was coming next in the campaign. It was like one of those movies where there's an opening scene which makes no real sense until later...'all will be revealed'. Its purpose was to engage people's attention, at which it succeeded very effectively. And for those who say Seinfeld was way out of date - for one thing, the show is still in syndication and regularly advertised (staying power) and for another, isn't that what people were saying about Windows, that it was past its peak and washed up? And yet Seinfeld is still a big wheel in his industry and is about to launch a new series...which had already been in the works for several months when he appeared in 'Shoe Circus' just over a year ago. Matter of fact, I bet any time you see a computer in that series it'll be running windows 7.
Microsoft's campaign exhibits a lot of diversity - ethnicities, ages, roles. Apple's poster boy (singular) is a smart-alec white hipster.
Justin Long's a yuppie, but he's far too casual to be a hipster. Apple isn't a hipster company. They're trendy, but that's different.
I've always held that Apple's strategy is to dehumanize their ads and focus on product. Most of their ads are simply shots of their product. I think that attempting to use diversity to sell a product indicates an underlying weakness in the product.
one of them included the line 'I guess I'm just not cool enough for a mac', which I thought was a clever dig at the snob appeal and pricing of the Mac products.
Sniping at a minority product was a bad idea. It made Microsoft out to be both petty and inferior. It's like if an Apple commercial made fun of a Zune.
Also: Selling a product by saying it's for uncool people never works. It gives you identification but not emulation.
So the CP&B ads mostly establish a direct connection between customer's goals and the product they can use to achieve them (Windows and the computer it runs on).
That's an interesting way to look at it. I hadn't thought about that. Not totally sure what I think of it but I see what you're saying.
I responded to the Seinfeld discussion in our other thread. I'd bet that his new series shows a lot of Macs, though. Seinfeld is famously a Mac user.
Coming soon: a brash young contender and old workhorse must overcome their differences and team up to defeat an evil giant who wants to turn the world into a giant server farm - staring Justin Long, John Hodgman, and James Earl Jones as the voice of Larry Ellison!
It'll be interesting to see what Seinfeld does on the show. I'm sure MS insisted on value for their $10 million deal with him, and that he's enough of a businessman to see the big picture.
That's the hipster stereotype nowadays.
Microsoft's goal in this Ad is to open people's eyes to the positive buzz Windows 7 has gotten. So they grabbed a cute, recognizable kid and basically had her do the intro because adorable catches people's attention. On that level I think it's a rousing success.
Are you saying Microsoft's ads didn't suck? First Bill Gates talked to a washed-out comedian about buying shoes. Then Microsoft launched an ad directly combatting an ad run by a competitor that has 8% market share, and the ad ignored the point of the original ad anyway (namely, that Mac and PC represent computers rather than actual users, and that PC users aren't likable-but-incompetent, PCs themselves are). Then they ran an ad that took Apple's claims of being a better computer and implicitly acknowledged it by focusing on how cheap Microsoft was, which—oops—backfired because in a recession, though people want cheaper computers they're more likely to make fewer quality purchases than many cheap ones.
This new ad wasn't nearly as bad, but what it is is generic. I don't watch that and get any feeling that Windows 7 is better than a Mac. In fact, as the author says, the stuff the kid's doing seems low-quality and bad. The kid could make better clipart on a Mac with stuff like instant alpha, an awesome feature that Apple doesn't use in ads because unlike its competitor Apple has a hundred different features it could use for offense. So it's not as bad as the older ads, which were negatively impacting Microsoft's image. Now it's back to being neutral and bland. But that's not good. It's just neutral.
You have to consider the image Microsoft has to repair here, at least they're moving in the right direction, and I'd rather them focus on their products and .NET framework than purely advertising first anyway. While the ads are not making me want to run out and buy Windows 7 right now, using the release build absolutely solidifies the fact that I will purchase a copy, it's really a pleasure to use, which says a lot about how far they've come since Vista/XP.
The Seinfeld ads weren't hideous, but I can't imagine Crispin thought it would give Microsoft a better name. And Seinfeld's washed out after Bee Movie. My ad prof suggested yesterday that the ads might have made more sense with a guy like Jon Stewart or Steven Colbert.
Washed up after Bee Movie? My kids loved it hah, but yes, I thought he was washed up as well, until I read he netted more total cash I think it was 2008-2009 than any other comedian.
Bee Movie after something as monumental as the Seinfeld show? That's a wash-out. Reminds me of the scene in Extras where Ricky Gervais goes to work for Doctor Who.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/13/top-celebrities-50-business...
His overall net worth is well north of $200m, plus he's about to launch a new series.
I don't think that making money stops you from being washed-out, though. Look at Charlie Sheen and 2.5 Men. It's one of the most popular shows on television, but it's a washed-out show nonetheless, receives bucketloads of negative press, and Sheen is a loony B-list actor who pitches 9/11 conspiracy theories. I'm sure he makes more money than, say, Jason Bateman, but Bateman isn't washed-out whereas Sheen is.
The attitude about Seinfeld is that he was great 20 years ago, sold out in the process of ending Seinfeld (some people are a little more generous than that), and hasn't done a damn thing since. Bee Movie generated waves of bad press, and that was supposed to be his comeback. The fact that I haven't heard of his doing a new series says something. If he was still trendy, I'd have known right away.
It seems a majority of actors on a hugely popular syndicated TV show really fail to jump start their careers afterward, likely because people expect the same performance quality every time, no room for error.
That's just plain wrong. I can't speak to the harm to MS from running the ads, but Apple LOST overall market share/sales this last quarter to other PC manufacturers because of the recession and people's love of cheap netbooks.
ref: http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/07/15/idc.prelim.q2....
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/04/15/idc.pc.share.q...
I have to admit, I splurted coffee out of my nose when "The Final Countdown" started playing behind the slideshow.
"The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products. "
I think the idea of using children to sell the computer is fine, but why not show them doing what a child would do? After all, isn't the point to show what makes a PC valuable to your family, and not what makes it valuable to marketing on behalf of Microsoft?
JCL?
Honestly I don't find Windows 7 awkward at all, on the contrary it feels very streamlined and quite a pleasure to use. Previous versions of windows I could see this applying to, but not 7.
OSX has a lot of 'awkward' to it as well, finder can be very frustrating to use to name one.
Frankly, this is exactly the sort of thing I expect to be helping a young Ada Browl with in 5-6 years time. [fanboy] On a PC.[/fanboy]
Clearly, the only response open to Apple at this point is an endorsement deal with Boxxy.
And he uses the most tired argument of all: "think of the children!".
Sorry, I am not persuaded.