I'm a Microsoft and I can't create an ad campaign (1 Viewer)

[DaveF]

New MS ads out
Microsoft: Microsoft's "I'm a PC" Ad Beats Seinfeld (But Not Hodgman)

I finally saw the new ads with Jerry Seinfeld online: if I hadn't known they were ads, I would have thought they were performance art pieces inexplicably starring Gates and Seinfeld.

These new ads are might as well be titled “Please stop making fun of Windows, Apple.” (to plagarize Daring Fireball)

 

[ErichH]

The adds are doing one thing - Making Apple Look Great

The guys at Chiat/Day must be laughing their asses off at this.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Nothing, but nothing beats the "I'm a PC, I'm a Mac" commercials.
I think it has been the cause of more people migrating to Mac than
anything else, that is except, Windows Vista.

 

[JohnRice]

I like the responses. It always cracks me up how defensive Windows users get about the Mac ads.

 

[KurtEP]

Those commercials make me glad I don't have any TV reception at home. The only time I've seen them was while watching a football game at the local Hooters. After watching the first one, I decided that whenever one came on, I'd just avert my gaze over to one of the waitresses. Worked great

.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

I have learned something over the past 20 months of being a
Mac owner....

If you thought the format war (HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray) was bad,
you haven't seen anything when it comes to talking PC vs. MAC.

I have gotten into some real dirty words with friends over which
computer is better -- so much so that it almost destroyed a friendship.
Personally, I am very defensive when it comes to people badmouthing
Macs and it's apparent that there are people like me on the PC side.

Be careful who you tout the virtues of MAC or PC to.

 

[DaveF]

Gruber (at Daring Fireball) has another interesting essay on the new Mac ads.

As for defending computers...I survived the Atari vs. Intellivsion vs. Coleco conflicts of the 1980s; then the Atari vs Commodore wars of the later 80s (those almost went nuclear). Mac vs PC for me is kids spitballing by comparison. And I now try to avoid religious discussions about computers.

 

[Ed Moxley]

I used to be that way (on the Mac side), until OSX came out. Then I went to a PC with XP on it. OSX took away the user-friendliness that Macs were known for. I had used macs for 10 yrs., and loved them. You had to totally relearn the OS, with OSX. People that took the time to learn it, ended up liking it. I probably would too. But I wasn't ready to spend that kind of time with it.

Pre OSX..........more user-friendly, easier to troubleshoot problems, easier to find stuff, etc.
OSX changed some keyboard shortcuts. Before OSX, probably 90% of problems could be fixed by trashing the prefs, of what was troubling you. There was nowhere within 55-60 miles to take in for repairs, but never really needed to. I was always able to fix any problems that came up, which were very few.

We still have a blueberry iMac. I turned it on, a few days ago, for the first time in four years, and looked in some folders and on the hard drive. Some good old memories still on there. It's slow as molasses in February though. At the time we bought it, it was very fast. It has OS 8.6 on it. The startup chime and mac smiley face was good to hear and see again.

I know people love OSX (it IS pretty to look at). Especially those that started out with it, and don't know what was before. I'm sorry, but I don't.

BTW.........
On the PC side, I don't like Vista either. I won't have anything to do with it until I absolutely have no choice. Like OSX, it's pretty to look at, but that's all.

 

[ErichH]

Interesting - X didn't really feel different to me. My start was Sys7. The 8-9 days were cool, and yes a pref trash was an easy fix (not to mention dragging darn near the whole system to a new drive and boot)

Some of the old tricks work now.

I agree, the current Leo is bubble gum, but the Apple core is still there.

 

[Ed Moxley]

My wife started with OS 6, at her job, doing yellow page ads. The first mac we bought for home was a Performa 575 with OS 7.1 on it. It had 5 mb of ram (4mb on mobo, and 1 mb simm). We bought 16 mb simm to upgrade it to 20mb. The 16mb was $600. I did the free upgrade to OS 7.5, and used that for years. The upgrade to OS 8.0 wasn't free. We bought a scsi scanner that came with the full version of the newest Photoshop (v3.5). Back then, a lot of the scanners came with free Photoshop. They quit doing that not long after we bought ours.

When we bought the iMac, we networked the two computers together. We could drag files from one to the other. It was very handy at the time. We bought Illustrator also. We had and used Photoshop and Illustrator on the Performa at one time. Remember, this computer only had 20mb of ram, and a 250mb hard drive. It did great!

We took a night course at local community college, in Photoshop, to upgrade our skills. We both have associate degrees in commercial art, but we learned old school methods (cut and paste, and actual drawing). No computer use at all in school, when getting degrees (early 70s). My wife is still doing that kind of work (yellowpage ads), 27 years later. She's pretty good with Photoshop now...........
I've forgotten everything I learned about it.

Anyway, just a little history of my (our) Mac use.

 

[Carl Miller]

Dave, you just brought back some fun memories for me!

Please tell me you weren't an Intelli-boy!

 

[DaveF]

Please tell me you were!

Gah! You probably owned a C64 too!

In my age and wisdom, though, I can finally admit I probably should have bought an Amiga instead of my Atari ST.

 

[Yee-Ming]

Ironic/coincidental: I've been in Seattle the last few days, and a few days ago, I saw a bunch of geeky Microsofties walking around the Pike Place Market, wearing MS-labelled windbreakers, and one had a "I'm a PC" sticker (like those tour group things) stuck on like a name-tag...

Later that evening I saw a newsreel piece saying that MS had had a big rally at the stadium to launch the new ad campaign.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Dave,

Very interesting article.

 

[Ted Todorov]

As someone who has been on Mac since OS 1.0 (March of 1984, on a single 400K floppy) and switched to OS X with OS X public beta, I never understood the classic Mac OS fans -- OS X is way more stable and powerful. The only thing I miss from classic Mac OS is creating a boot disk with a simple disk to disk Finder copy. It's too bad you need to fiddle or use a third party utility to accomplish that now. OS X lets you configure keyboard shortcuts, so if you miss something from 9 so badly, just make X behave like 9.

As for the MS adds: MS might want to consider spending their $300 million on fixing Windows instead of trying to sell the same broken mess. But John Gruber certainly said it well -- when you're in a hole, stop digging.

 

[TonyD]

anyone see the latest ad commercial?

a unch of people are given computers to use.
later they arr told that they have been using laptops with win vista
installed, and all the people are shocked at how easy the laptops were to use
and they had no idea they were using windows vista.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Tony,

Have not seen that commercial but why, based on your
description of it, does it sound totally scripted?

I have seen the new commercial where all these people proclaim
"I'm a PC," and you know what?....I don't get it. At least Mac goes
right to the core and lets its viewers know what they are all about.
This commercial I have no idea what they are trying to prove other
than the fact that so many different kinds of people use a PC.

Yeah? So what? That makes you better?

 

[nolesrule]

I think the point is to show that people can still do whatever they need to do on a PC (which apprently is the new term for Wintel-based computers) and that Apple products aren't better just because "I'm a Mac" tells us so.

And it's not. In fact, Apple is starting to turn into what Microsoft was in the late 90s. They are becoming control freaks of their own products and stifling competition within their own market (see a current lawsuit about MacOS being tied to Apple hardware for nor reason other than to be able to sell the hardware and the recent rejections of certain apps in their iPhone Apps store as a pair of examples).

It's starting to look more and more like Windows is becoming the middle ground somewhere between FOSS vs. closed and controlled systems.

 

[TonyD]

I don't know if that ad is scripted, i think they just found people
who were living without modern technology or something.
These people were saying how easy it was to use or somesuch.
My father has a laptop with vista and i have to go over there neary weakly to help him figure something out.
sometimes i can't figure it out because
I'm so used to the macbook for the last 2 years.

from what i've seen using his laptop, i'm very thankful i got out of
PC just before vista came out.


I've seen the "i'm a pc" commercial too.
i like the commercial but it isn't anything that would sway me
back to the pc side.

 

[DaveF]

This is from July, the Mojave Experiment. It's not scripted. More interesting critique from DF.

These new "I'm a PC" ads from MS are interesting. They Hodgeman lookalike is a terrible idea: the world leader, monopoly company mimicing their (relatively) tiny competitor is such obviously bad marketing, it's staggering. "please stop making fun of us, Apple!"

Had this ad come out on its own, before there ever were "I'm a PC, I'm a Mac" ads, it would be very strong image-driven marketing. It says nothing, but reminds us that Windows users are you and me, are interesting and diverse characters.

But as a reaction -- one that's 2 years late! -- it only emphasizes Apple's message: MS is uncreative, sluggish, and incompetently and desparately playing catch-up for "mindshare".

Couple this with the Gates / Seinfeld ads ("oh, we really meant these to be a pointless two-ad sequence") and its driven home that MS is thrashing about cluelessly -- they've been a monopoly too long and can no longer market themselves.

And this message is nothing new. The print campaigns with people wearing dinosaur heads? "Shut up, you're coming with us" ads? "Help us, help you, to enable us enabling you to make yourself into ourself be yourself" ads? They've been adrift for years in marketing.