Mac Authority: Microsoft's Ads are clever, but why are they bothering?
Alex Kidman thinks Microsoft's latest anti-Apple ad campaign is clever, but isn't quite sure what the point is.
Microsoft's latest foray into stemming the tide of OS X sales -- not so much hardware sales, as Microsoft (outside keyboards, mice and Xboxes) isn't a hardware company -- has so far emerged as two very clever ads touting the price differences between Macs and other notebook PC systems.
On first watch, they're entertaining enough, with a fairly solid message. They're very American -- I don't expect to see them re-dubbed for the Australian market any time soon -- and it's undoubtedly not an accident that Microsoft's chosen cute young things as the faces of the new ads.
Then again, it's not an accident that Apple uses a young hipster-looking guy for its Macs, and a stuffy looking fat guy for the PC side of its advertising either.
The new ads are certainly a huge step ahead of their perplexing and weird series of Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates ads , which rival only Homer Simpson's ad-agency led "Mr Plow" ads for not making any damn sense at all. These at least make basic sense, at a surface level.
Drill a little deeper, though, and there are a few cracks. As PC Authority noted yesterday, the "expert" Gianpaulo walks out with a PC designed for mobility, power and battery life... except that he walks out with a 16", not portable, poor battery life system. Whoops.
Still, the "compete on price" argument is an old gambit, and to be honest, Apple's in the worst possible position right now, as the new Macbook and Macbook Pro lines are, undoubtedly, on the costly side, especially in the current market.
In the first ad, the buyer called Lauren declares that she's "just not cool enough to be a Mac person", which is marketing genius, really.
Declaring yourself cool is never cool, and it's the most direct shot at Apple in the whole ad. Some commentators have noted that Lauren is never seen directly within the Apple store -- there's a YouTube video that more than suggests that she never enters the store at all here -- but honestly, I can't see Apple giving permission to film on what is private property for an anti-Apple ad in any case, can you?
Meanwhile, Gianpaulo declares the Macbooks "sexy" but "all about the brand", which is interesting in itself, if for only one reason.
It'd be pretty easy to strip the Microsoft logos from those ads and declare them to be HP ads. Not so much "buy Windows", but "Buy an HP laptop". Lauren looks at what seem to be other brands -- but doesn't name them, instead calling them "that one".
Gianpaulo does exactly the same thing. For what are meant to be "reality" ads, that's a surprising conclusion, given the number of laptop brands that both buyers apparently looked at.
Perhaps they're not cool enough for a Mac, and not able to pronounce product names that have more than two letters? The HP boxes even get a lingering box shot, as if to push home the brand.
What I'm not sure of is exactly what Microsoft gets out of the ad. It doesn't tout Windows per se (for all we know, Gianpaulo, the "power" user, is going to install Ubuntu on his system and apply for whatever rebate he can get for not installing Windows), but instead just tries to downsell the Mac side of the equation. Vista doesn't get a mention, and neither does Windows 7.
Last time I checked, Apple was running at something like 10-15% of the sales market (depending on whose figures you believe), and Linux is still only on the semi-fractional scale.
Microsoft's clearly got something of a perception problem on its hands -- and it'll be fascinating to see Apple's ad-led response to these ads -- but will these ads actually sell more Windows systems?
Other Blog Entries written by Alex Kidman:
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Comments: 1
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Jo
Apr 10, 2009 2:23 AM
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People who use Windows are sheep they follow the herd. |