On a short, unrelated note: as a student of our marketing culture, I tend to watch ads a lot. My Mom doesn't, she thinks it's weird to pay attention to what's going on with commercial television in between the detective story part. I watch it kind of obsessively, because you can learn a lot from commercials... about who we are, what interests us, what works and what doesn't.
I'm always fascinated by Microsoft's advertising. Like a number of companies, I don't think Microsoft actually understands advertising because its success was never about getting the general consumer to like their product. It doesn't matter if you like Windows or not, if 89% of computers use it. It just is.
Plus Microsoft's people - Bill Gates, especially, but clearly others - think of themselves as big idea people. Thus they tend not to sell their products as practical, useful tools (if they did, they'd realize that Excel should be up front in their campaigns, for one thing), but as game changers that improve humanity... and we, of course, need improving.
I think these notions go a long way to explaining the frankly bizarre ads that recently showed up featuring Gates and Seinfeld. Lacking any real connection to Microsoft product, they seemed to represent some inner monologue about big ideas, and how things are interconnected. Mostly, though, they made no sense.
In its place, Microsoft launched a more direct assault on Apple's "I'm a Mac" with a rather witty response to the bespectacled "I'm a PC" presentation in those ads. "I'm a PC," of course, is almost everyone; and Microsoft's ad made the connections ("i wear jeans." "I study genes." "I design jeans.") that showed the PC's reach.
Just one thing... what does that have to do with Microsoft?
What's really smart about Apple's campaign - yes, yes, I'm a Mac - is that it doesn't really run against Microsoft as much as it does the "DellWinTel" model of PCs with Intel cards and Windows operating systems. Yes, they've made fun of various aspects of Vista, but in the context of the problems it causes the pooter, not in itself. Microsoft's ad, while charming, falls into the usual trap - okay, we're all PC... now what? Nothing underlines it quite so well as the final clip of Deepak Chopra (fresh? current? why him?) expounding on the "I'm a human being" line. Portentous, overthought, and... unrelatable.
I mention all of this because the real punchline is this: like most advertising, the "I'm a PC" ad... was built on a Mac. And several of the spokespeople in it - Eva Longoria Parker, Pharrell Willimas, and, well, Chopra - are actually Apple users and supporters. And I'm just a human... giggling.
What I don't understand about the Mac ads and some of its users (including you in this post) is the prerequisite snark/mocking tone; feel free to do a search on youtube to see the backlash to it...but then my PC has never given me the problems alleged by Mac users.
Posted by: jinbaltimore | September 26, 2008 at 06:09 PM