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Those Microsoft Ads
In my most recent Brief Notes, I commented on the first of the Seinfeld Microsoft adverts and suggested that it wasn’t going to convince anyone to go out and buy any Micorsoft. The second one came along a few days ago and was just plain confusing. Something about connecting with ordinary people, maybe? Whatever, it’s four and half minutes that I’ll never get back, and it still didn’t make me want to go out and buy any Microsoft products.
It seems that I was not alone in not getting what these adverts were trying to achieve, as despite supposedly originally being planned to be a longer series, the Seinfeld ads have now been canned. Allegedly, with a third one already in production. I’m sure Jerry isn’t upset - $10m for a few hours work? Nice!
But Microsoft have another ace up their marketing sleeve - the “I’m a PC” ads. And it’s here where I find myself in the unusual position of actually coming to Microsoft’s defence. I read several tech blogs and, being a Mac user, I tend towards the ones that are Mac-centric. Without exception, all of these blogs have commented on the new adverts and have torn them to pieces for jumping on Apple’s bandwagon, missing the point of the “Get a Mac” adverts, having to rely on spoofing an existing, successful campaign, and so on.
If you’ve only heard the basic premise of the adverts, and not seen them for yourself, then you might be inclined to side with these commenters so why not go and watch them? There are three - Pride, Not Alone and Stereotype - and they’re only short so it won’t take you long.
Done? OK. So, to me, what these three new adverts are showing is the diverse range of people that currently use a PC, as opposed to a Mac. It gives an insight into the sort of things that these people do with their PC and it helps to show that PCs can, actually, be a lot more than a biege box that sits in a corner being hated by everyone. I think it shows, much more than Apple’s “Get a Mac” ads do, that the PC can be used in many different settings, by people of differing abilities, and with a wide range of different goals that they want to achieve. Apple and Mac, I’m sorry to say, still have not overcome that image of being for artsy-fartsy graphic designers and too-cool people with money to waste.
But, say some, Apple are giving reasons to buy a Mac, which is their computer, but Microsoft are trumpeting the joys of being a PC, which is not their computer; why aren’t they talking about being a Window? Firstly, of course, Apple made the association between PC and Windows / Microsoft in their own adverts so - as these are intended to spoof the Apple ones - Microsoft have continued that association. But secondly, and more importantly, public perception is still very much that if you’re talking about a PC, you’re talking about Windows. Yes, Linux is making in-roads but the majority of PC users will be running Windows. So it’s a fair comparison.
Let’s face it, most people are perfectly happy being a PC. It does what they want it to do, it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg and if they don’t mess with it then most of the time it won’t fall over. (So often, the reason Windows falls over is because the user has decided to delete vital files, or change settings he knows nothing about. Trust me, voice of experience). Mac’s don’t fall over, either, but that’s because OS X doesn’t let you get at the vital files so easily so they can’t be accidentally deleted. And, of course, OS X doesn’t have to support multitudes of different hardware in the way that Windows does.
On the whole, I think Microsoft have done something good with these new adverts and I’d hope to see a few more in this vein. Apple, on the other hand, need to think about retiring the “Get a Mac” ads - they were never as funny as Apple seemed to think they were, and they’ve gone on for too long now.
Comments
One Response to “Those Microsoft Ads”
I think you know what to do....
Wolfs Stuff
Wolfs Helpers
Microsoft is getting there and its time for Apple to get ready for some ‘real’ competition. On the whole I personally feel that Microsoft is doing better in terms of OS development as their OS can be used more widely.