More Microsoft Ad Campaign Missteps
Monday, June 22nd, 2009Oh Microsoft. You have so much money. Why is it all of your ad campaigns make you look like a grumpy old dinosaur, a complete dick or a bad politician?
THE RECAP:
Of course this all started with the ill-fated Seinfeld campaign which made the mistake of putting Bill Gates in front of a camera for comedic effect. The commercials made me wonder, “Why would I trust these guys’ opinions about computers? They seem really out of touch.”
Then there was the “I’m a PC” campaign which banked on the underwhelming selling point of “Look! Macs might be cool but some people also use PCs.”
Then there was the mildly misleading “Laptop Hunters” campaign to show that PCs are cheaper than Macs. And that, given $1000 and a script, a paid actor would choose an inferior PC over a Mac. You can read about it here and here and (my personal favorite) here, where a filmmaker chooses to edit video on a PC. Interesting choice. And as always, all of these ads were made on Macs.
But you were just getting warmed up!