{"id":443,"date":"2008-09-19T18:11:49","date_gmt":"2008-09-19T22:11:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/?p=443"},"modified":"2008-09-19T18:31:08","modified_gmt":"2008-09-19T22:31:08","slug":"microstft-misses-the-mark-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/2008\/09\/microstft-misses-the-mark-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Microstft 0, Apple 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Round 2 of Microsoft’s “We’re not as lame as you think we are” campaign aired last night during The Office.\u00a0 Check it:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Ok.\u00a0 It’s better than the Seinfeld ads.\u00a0 I’ll give it that.\u00a0 But that’s not that much.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My beef with it is this: these people are not cool (that’s the point, right?).\u00a0 They’re fine.\u00a0 They seem perfectly nice.\u00a0 But the thing the Mac vs PC commercials got right was the attitude of the Mac.\u00a0 He just seems like a great, smart guy who you’d want to have a drink with.\u00a0 You want to hang out with that guy.\u00a0 You want to be that guy.\u00a0 So in the traditional advertising sense, they’re selling you an image: buy a Mac and you can be cool.<\/p>\n

So fine.\u00a0 Not all ads have to play into that old-school ad logic.\u00a0 What does this ad have to say for itself?<\/p>\n

What this ad tells me is that many dull people who lead semi-adventurous lives are already using Windows.\u00a0 I knew that.\u00a0 They all seem like people who are not particularly savy or tasteful — and wouldn’t necessarily know the difference between a Mac and a PC.\u00a0 Or, like, they get grant money from Microsoft so they have<\/em> to buy PCs.<\/p>\n

With this crowd it doesn’t seem like an issue of taste or any sort of discerning opinion. As a savy (albeit ferociously pro-Mac) technology consumer, I don’t get the idea from the commercial that this product will help me lead a more productive, fun life.\u00a0 It just proves that too many other people of all walks of life use PCs.<\/p>\n

As far as I know, Microsoft is losing market share to Apple primarily in the 18-25 range. That age range cares more about looks, ease of use, and general coolness quotient far more than the fact that a large number of older people do their perfectly interesting jobs just fine in spite of the fact that they own PCs.<\/p>\n

So what’s the point?\u00a0 To make people who already have PCs feel like they’re in good company? Maybe.\u00a0 I guess that’s valuable.\u00a0 But then this whole campaign is more of Microsft trying to plug the dam of the outflow of users — rather than a counter-attack.<\/p>\n

Safety.\u00a0 Make people feel safe and secure in the boring products they already own.<\/p>\n

I guess it’s just what you’d expect from Microsoft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Round 2 of Microsoft’s “We’re not as lame as you think we are” campaign aired last night during The Office.\u00a0 Check it: Ok.\u00a0 It’s better than the Seinfeld ads.\u00a0 I’ll give it that.\u00a0 But that’s not that much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,4,6],"tags":[179,71,187,186],"class_list":["post-443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","category-flicks","category-rants-and-raves","tag-advertising","tag-apple","tag-get-a-mac","tag-microsft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":453,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443\/revisions\/453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}