7 ms·

Windows 7 is reduced to rainbows and unicorns

18 points by edw519 17y ago

unalone 17y ago
One of my professors is the creative director of an ad firm. I asked him what CP+B's plan has been with Microsoft, since their route has really been baffling me. He said that in his mind they're making a mistake by trying to address Apple, because Apple can play better on their terms than Microsoft can. So from that point of view, this new ad is more effective, because it's stopped legitimatizing Apple's Get A Mac campaign. I still think that CP+B is over their heads in this campaign. They do great for Burger King, where they're competing with equal brands, but Apple has a better brand than Microsoft, and so "edgy" isn't cutting it for them. Chiat has a powerful set of ads, so it's not like they're playing against a void.
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  I think your professor is missing a few things (or they haven't made it to this conversation so far): Microsoft's campaign exhibits a lot of diversity - ethnicities, ages, roles. Apple's poster boy (singular) is a smart-alec white hipster. I didn't particularly care for the 'laptop hunter' ads but one of them included the line 'I guess I'm just not cool enough for a mac', which I thought was a clever dig at the snob appeal and pricing of the Mac products. It's also, I suspect, aimed at offsetting the grumbles of nativists about Microsoft's public support for H1-B workers - though perhaps I'm attributing too much vision to CP&B there. More importantly, most of the commercials emphasize what people do with their computers - they run busineses (tattoo guy), study or make movies (laptop hunters), or grow up doing creative things (Kylie, the terminally cute little girl). The Mac guy just stands around saying how much better he is because he's a Mac - he doesn't actually do anything. So the CP&B ads mostly establish a direct connection between customer's goals and the product they can use to achieve them (Windows and the computer it runs on). The Apple 'tech' commercials (this is a Mac/iPhone - look, you can do this, this and this) are much better in that regard, but they do present a solution and invite the viewer to consider how it might solve a problem or ease their routine. I think think it's interesting that the MS ads are built around the idea of the user articulating the goal first and then exercising or expressing a choice to do it with a PC. In narrative terms, they establish character first and then offer (their) technology as an aid to that. Finally, the MS ads show Windows running on a variety of different hardware - premium to be sure, but that variety carries connotations of choice, flexibility, and mutual confidence among manufacturers in Windows, whereas Apple is an all-or-nothing proposition. You want to go Mac, well say goodbye to your existing hardware whether or not it works...not an easy decision in recessionary times. I'm actually pretty impressed with CP&B. Even the Shoe Circus commercial with Seinfeld was clever: by playing off the dorkiness and incomprehensibility, and ending with an image of a departing bill Gates (but with a hint that new things were in the pipeline), it effectively leveraged the existing preconceptions about Microsoft and used them as a pivot to direct attention towards what was coming next in the campaign. It was like one of those movies where there's an opening scene which makes no real sense until later...'all will be revealed'. Its purpose was to engage people's attention, at which it succeeded very effectively. And for those who say Seinfeld was way out of date - for one thing, the show is still in syndication and regularly advertised (staying power) and for another, isn't that what people were saying about Windows, that it was past its peak and washed up? And yet Seinfeld is still a big wheel in his industry and is about to launch a new series...which had already been in the works for several months when he appeared in 'Shoe Circus' just over a year ago. Matter of fact, I bet any time you see a computer in that series it'll be running windows 7.
  - unalone 17y ago
    My conversation with my professor was really informal; I just thought his was an interesting view. Microsoft's campaign exhibits a lot of diversity - ethnicities, ages, roles. Apple's poster boy (singular) is a smart-alec white hipster. Justin Long's a yuppie, but he's far too casual to be a hipster. Apple isn't a hipster company. They're trendy, but that's different. I've always held that Apple's strategy is to dehumanize their ads and focus on product. Most of their ads are simply shots of their product. I think that attempting to use diversity to sell a product indicates an underlying weakness in the product. one of them included the line 'I guess I'm just not cool enough for a mac', which I thought was a clever dig at the snob appeal and pricing of the Mac products. Sniping at a minority product was a bad idea. It made Microsoft out to be both petty and inferior. It's like if an Apple commercial made fun of a Zune. Also: Selling a product by saying it's for uncool people never works. It gives you identification but not emulation. So the CP&B ads mostly establish a direct connection between customer's goals and the product they can use to achieve them (Windows and the computer it runs on). That's an interesting way to look at it. I hadn't thought about that. Not totally sure what I think of it but I see what you're saying. I responded to the Seinfeld discussion in our other thread. I'd bet that his new series shows a lot of Macs, though. Seinfeld is famously a Mac user.
    - anigbrowl 17y ago
      I must be getting old - to me yuppies have power suits and blackberries and hipsters wear hoodies :) 'Cool' is a very elusive concept; look at Napoleon Dynamite. Embracing the underdog role can be a very effective social strategy. I'm coming at this from a screenwriting perspective...Justin Long is like Buzz Lightyear or Lightning McQueen in Toy Story and Cars. Coming soon: a brash young contender and old workhorse must overcome their differences and team up to defeat an evil giant who wants to turn the world into a giant server farm - staring Justin Long, John Hodgman, and James Earl Jones as the voice of Larry Ellison! It'll be interesting to see what Seinfeld does on the show. I'm sure MS insisted on value for their $10 million deal with him, and that he's enough of a businessman to see the big picture.
      - 17y ago
SamAtt 17y ago
Despite the author's claims to the contrary he's clearly biased (at least towards Apple's brand). He basically says he thinks every Ad that Microsoft has done sucks and every Ad that Apple has done is genius (which is a stretch on the most recent one). So is it a surprise he doesn't like this one? Microsoft's goal in this Ad is to open people's eyes to the positive buzz Windows 7 has gotten. So they grabbed a cute, recognizable kid and basically had her do the intro because adorable catches people's attention. On that level I think it's a rousing success.
- unalone 17y ago
  Apple's most recent ads are definitely pushing it, but they're working. They've taken every attack Microsoft has attempted and reversed it. They're starting to get really obnoxious, but that's because Microsoft got obnoxious first. Are you saying Microsoft's ads didn't suck? First Bill Gates talked to a washed-out comedian about buying shoes. Then Microsoft launched an ad directly combatting an ad run by a competitor that has 8% market share, and the ad ignored the point of the original ad anyway (namely, that Mac and PC represent computers rather than actual users, and that PC users aren't likable-but-incompetent, PCs themselves are). Then they ran an ad that took Apple's claims of being a better computer and implicitly acknowledged it by focusing on how cheap Microsoft was, which—oops—backfired because in a recession, though people want cheaper computers they're more likely to make fewer quality purchases than many cheap ones. This new ad wasn't nearly as bad, but what it is is generic. I don't watch that and get any feeling that Windows 7 is better than a Mac. In fact, as the author says, the stuff the kid's doing seems low-quality and bad. The kid could make better clipart on a Mac with stuff like instant alpha, an awesome feature that Apple doesn't use in ads because unlike its competitor Apple has a hundred different features it could use for offense. So it's not as bad as the older ads, which were negatively impacting Microsoft's image. Now it's back to being neutral and bland. But that's not good. It's just neutral.
  - thismat 17y ago
    I actually liked the ads with Seinfeld(who isn't really washed out if you consider his earning power), is that weird? You have to consider the image Microsoft has to repair here, at least they're moving in the right direction, and I'd rather them focus on their products and .NET framework than purely advertising first anyway. While the ads are not making me want to run out and buy Windows 7 right now, using the release build absolutely solidifies the fact that I will purchase a copy, it's really a pleasure to use, which says a lot about how far they've come since Vista/XP.
embeddedradical 17y ago
the funniest part, more so than ineffective advertisements, is that that which got everyone's panties in a bunch was happiness. down with happiness! heh
heyitsnick 17y ago
For those who haven't caught it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssOq02DTTMU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssOq02DTTMU
- steverb 17y ago
  Thank you for the link. I have to admit, I splurted coffee out of my nose when "The Final Countdown" started playing behind the slideshow.
  - mixmax 17y ago
    I think this Steve Jobs quote adequately explains it. "The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products. "
makecheck 17y ago
The main thing that bugged me about Microsoft's commercial is that a young girl isn't likely to do all of the things she was said to do. That is, she supposedly reads rave reviews of Windows 7 (that were probably in words above her grade level), understands them, and turns them all into a fancy slideshow with music; all while using Windows, the most awkward of all operating system user interfaces in the world? I think the idea of using children to sell the computer is fine, but why not show them doing what a child would do? After all, isn't the point to show what makes a PC valuable to your family, and not what makes it valuable to marketing on behalf of Microsoft?
- jws 17y ago
  …Windows, the most awkward of all operating system user interfaces in the world… JCL?
  - jcl 17y ago
    Hmm? ;)
- thismat 17y ago
  …Windows, the most awkward of all operating system user interfaces in the world… Honestly I don't find Windows 7 awkward at all, on the contrary it feels very streamlined and quite a pleasure to use. Previous versions of windows I could see this applying to, but not 7. OSX has a lot of 'awkward' to it as well, finder can be very frustrating to use to name one.
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  Surely this is exactly what a child would do. Childish images, childish fonts, childish music. Marshmallow cat is fluffy. Words above her grade level...like 'snappy...and reponkusive!' I recall cutting out pictures and cartoons from newspapers and magazines and pasting them together to make little presenations (about the then-recession, believe it or not) in order to impress my Dad at about the same age...I didn't understand it especially, but I knew he was interested in it so decided to help him out. Frankly, this is exactly the sort of thing I expect to be helping a young Ada Browl with in 5-6 years time. [fanboy] On a PC.[/fanboy] Clearly, the only response open to Apple at this point is an endorsement deal with Boxxy.
ZeroGravitas 17y ago
Doesn't this undermine the last advert with Kylie? I thought she'd actually done the stuff in that one, but in this one it's clearly not her work. Are we supposed to re-think our impressions of the first one? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhre2C4THT4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhre2C4THT4
astine 17y ago
I'm a computer bisexual -- I use a Mac at home and a PC at work -- I have a request to make to bloggers and journalists: please don't use this analogy unless you are in fact screwing your computers as it makes it difficult for me to take you seriously. "OS agnostic," has been around for a while and is clearer. It's especially annoying as he has a real point to make and the most noticeable thing about the article is what looks like a ribald joke.
- masklinn 17y ago
  OS agnostic would mean he'd accept to touch non-OSX unices as well.
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  Perhaps he feels screwed by the computers...but seriously, I agree.
psranga 17y ago
Where was this guy when Apple used Gandhi, MLK etc? And he uses the most tired argument of all: "think of the children!". Sorry, I am not persuaded.
neovive 17y ago
Regardless of the opinions on the Microsoft advertising campaigns. It is clear that Windows 7 addresses many of the problems with Vista and most large companies (with large contracts with Dell and other PC vendors), will likely be upgrading this time around resulting in large adoption of Windows 7 in the enterprise. Most people are pretty tired of using Windows XP at this point.

18 points by edw519 17y ago

One of my professors is the creative director of an ad firm. I asked him what CP+B's plan has been with Microsoft, since their route has really been baffling me. He said that in his mind they're making a mistake by trying to address Apple, because Apple can play better on their terms than Microsoft can. So from that point of view, this new ad is more effective, because it's stopped legitimatizing Apple's Get A Mac campaign. I still think that CP+B is over their heads in this campaign. They do great for Burger King, where they're competing with equal brands, but Apple has a better brand than Microsoft, and so "edgy" isn't cutting it for them. Chiat has a powerful set of ads, so it's not like they're playing against a void.

anigbrowl 17y ago
I think your professor is missing a few things (or they haven't made it to this conversation so far): Microsoft's campaign exhibits a lot of diversity - ethnicities, ages, roles. Apple's poster boy (singular) is a smart-alec white hipster. I didn't particularly care for the 'laptop hunter' ads but one of them included the line 'I guess I'm just not cool enough for a mac', which I thought was a clever dig at the snob appeal and pricing of the Mac products. It's also, I suspect, aimed at offsetting the grumbles of nativists about Microsoft's public support for H1-B workers - though perhaps I'm attributing too much vision to CP&B there. More importantly, most of the commercials emphasize what people do with their computers - they run busineses (tattoo guy), study or make movies (laptop hunters), or grow up doing creative things (Kylie, the terminally cute little girl). The Mac guy just stands around saying how much better he is because he's a Mac - he doesn't actually do anything. So the CP&B ads mostly establish a direct connection between customer's goals and the product they can use to achieve them (Windows and the computer it runs on). The Apple 'tech' commercials (this is a Mac/iPhone - look, you can do this, this and this) are much better in that regard, but they do present a solution and invite the viewer to consider how it might solve a problem or ease their routine. I think think it's interesting that the MS ads are built around the idea of the user articulating the goal first and then exercising or expressing a choice to do it with a PC. In narrative terms, they establish character first and then offer (their) technology as an aid to that. Finally, the MS ads show Windows running on a variety of different hardware - premium to be sure, but that variety carries connotations of choice, flexibility, and mutual confidence among manufacturers in Windows, whereas Apple is an all-or-nothing proposition. You want to go Mac, well say goodbye to your existing hardware whether or not it works...not an easy decision in recessionary times. I'm actually pretty impressed with CP&B. Even the Shoe Circus commercial with Seinfeld was clever: by playing off the dorkiness and incomprehensibility, and ending with an image of a departing bill Gates (but with a hint that new things were in the pipeline), it effectively leveraged the existing preconceptions about Microsoft and used them as a pivot to direct attention towards what was coming next in the campaign. It was like one of those movies where there's an opening scene which makes no real sense until later...'all will be revealed'. Its purpose was to engage people's attention, at which it succeeded very effectively. And for those who say Seinfeld was way out of date - for one thing, the show is still in syndication and regularly advertised (staying power) and for another, isn't that what people were saying about Windows, that it was past its peak and washed up? And yet Seinfeld is still a big wheel in his industry and is about to launch a new series...which had already been in the works for several months when he appeared in 'Shoe Circus' just over a year ago. Matter of fact, I bet any time you see a computer in that series it'll be running windows 7.
- unalone 17y ago
  My conversation with my professor was really informal; I just thought his was an interesting view. Microsoft's campaign exhibits a lot of diversity - ethnicities, ages, roles. Apple's poster boy (singular) is a smart-alec white hipster. Justin Long's a yuppie, but he's far too casual to be a hipster. Apple isn't a hipster company. They're trendy, but that's different. I've always held that Apple's strategy is to dehumanize their ads and focus on product. Most of their ads are simply shots of their product. I think that attempting to use diversity to sell a product indicates an underlying weakness in the product. one of them included the line 'I guess I'm just not cool enough for a mac', which I thought was a clever dig at the snob appeal and pricing of the Mac products. Sniping at a minority product was a bad idea. It made Microsoft out to be both petty and inferior. It's like if an Apple commercial made fun of a Zune. Also: Selling a product by saying it's for uncool people never works. It gives you identification but not emulation. So the CP&B ads mostly establish a direct connection between customer's goals and the product they can use to achieve them (Windows and the computer it runs on). That's an interesting way to look at it. I hadn't thought about that. Not totally sure what I think of it but I see what you're saying. I responded to the Seinfeld discussion in our other thread. I'd bet that his new series shows a lot of Macs, though. Seinfeld is famously a Mac user.
  - anigbrowl 17y ago
    I must be getting old - to me yuppies have power suits and blackberries and hipsters wear hoodies :) 'Cool' is a very elusive concept; look at Napoleon Dynamite. Embracing the underdog role can be a very effective social strategy. I'm coming at this from a screenwriting perspective...Justin Long is like Buzz Lightyear or Lightning McQueen in Toy Story and Cars. Coming soon: a brash young contender and old workhorse must overcome their differences and team up to defeat an evil giant who wants to turn the world into a giant server farm - staring Justin Long, John Hodgman, and James Earl Jones as the voice of Larry Ellison! It'll be interesting to see what Seinfeld does on the show. I'm sure MS insisted on value for their $10 million deal with him, and that he's enough of a businessman to see the big picture.
    - 17y ago

SamAtt 17y ago

Despite the author's claims to the contrary he's clearly biased (at least towards Apple's brand). He basically says he thinks every Ad that Microsoft has done sucks and every Ad that Apple has done is genius (which is a stretch on the most recent one). So is it a surprise he doesn't like this one? Microsoft's goal in this Ad is to open people's eyes to the positive buzz Windows 7 has gotten. So they grabbed a cute, recognizable kid and basically had her do the intro because adorable catches people's attention. On that level I think it's a rousing success.

unalone 17y ago
Apple's most recent ads are definitely pushing it, but they're working. They've taken every attack Microsoft has attempted and reversed it. They're starting to get really obnoxious, but that's because Microsoft got obnoxious first. Are you saying Microsoft's ads didn't suck? First Bill Gates talked to a washed-out comedian about buying shoes. Then Microsoft launched an ad directly combatting an ad run by a competitor that has 8% market share, and the ad ignored the point of the original ad anyway (namely, that Mac and PC represent computers rather than actual users, and that PC users aren't likable-but-incompetent, PCs themselves are). Then they ran an ad that took Apple's claims of being a better computer and implicitly acknowledged it by focusing on how cheap Microsoft was, which—oops—backfired because in a recession, though people want cheaper computers they're more likely to make fewer quality purchases than many cheap ones. This new ad wasn't nearly as bad, but what it is is generic. I don't watch that and get any feeling that Windows 7 is better than a Mac. In fact, as the author says, the stuff the kid's doing seems low-quality and bad. The kid could make better clipart on a Mac with stuff like instant alpha, an awesome feature that Apple doesn't use in ads because unlike its competitor Apple has a hundred different features it could use for offense. So it's not as bad as the older ads, which were negatively impacting Microsoft's image. Now it's back to being neutral and bland. But that's not good. It's just neutral.
- thismat 17y ago
  I actually liked the ads with Seinfeld(who isn't really washed out if you consider his earning power), is that weird? You have to consider the image Microsoft has to repair here, at least they're moving in the right direction, and I'd rather them focus on their products and .NET framework than purely advertising first anyway. While the ads are not making me want to run out and buy Windows 7 right now, using the release build absolutely solidifies the fact that I will purchase a copy, it's really a pleasure to use, which says a lot about how far they've come since Vista/XP.

embeddedradical 17y ago

the funniest part, more so than ineffective advertisements, is that that which got everyone's panties in a bunch was happiness. down with happiness! heh

heyitsnick 17y ago

For those who haven't caught it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssOq02DTTMU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssOq02DTTMU

steverb 17y ago
Thank you for the link. I have to admit, I splurted coffee out of my nose when "The Final Countdown" started playing behind the slideshow.
- mixmax 17y ago
  I think this Steve Jobs quote adequately explains it. "The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products. "

makecheck 17y ago

The main thing that bugged me about Microsoft's commercial is that a young girl isn't likely to do all of the things she was said to do. That is, she supposedly reads rave reviews of Windows 7 (that were probably in words above her grade level), understands them, and turns them all into a fancy slideshow with music; all while using Windows, the most awkward of all operating system user interfaces in the world? I think the idea of using children to sell the computer is fine, but why not show them doing what a child would do? After all, isn't the point to show what makes a PC valuable to your family, and not what makes it valuable to marketing on behalf of Microsoft?

jws 17y ago
…Windows, the most awkward of all operating system user interfaces in the world… JCL?
- jcl 17y ago
  Hmm? ;)
thismat 17y ago
…Windows, the most awkward of all operating system user interfaces in the world… Honestly I don't find Windows 7 awkward at all, on the contrary it feels very streamlined and quite a pleasure to use. Previous versions of windows I could see this applying to, but not 7. OSX has a lot of 'awkward' to it as well, finder can be very frustrating to use to name one.
anigbrowl 17y ago
Surely this is exactly what a child would do. Childish images, childish fonts, childish music. Marshmallow cat is fluffy. Words above her grade level...like 'snappy...and reponkusive!' I recall cutting out pictures and cartoons from newspapers and magazines and pasting them together to make little presenations (about the then-recession, believe it or not) in order to impress my Dad at about the same age...I didn't understand it especially, but I knew he was interested in it so decided to help him out. Frankly, this is exactly the sort of thing I expect to be helping a young Ada Browl with in 5-6 years time. [fanboy] On a PC.[/fanboy] Clearly, the only response open to Apple at this point is an endorsement deal with Boxxy.

ZeroGravitas 17y ago

Doesn't this undermine the last advert with Kylie? I thought she'd actually done the stuff in that one, but in this one it's clearly not her work. Are we supposed to re-think our impressions of the first one? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhre2C4THT4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhre2C4THT4

astine 17y ago

I'm a computer bisexual -- I use a Mac at home and a PC at work -- I have a request to make to bloggers and journalists: please don't use this analogy unless you are in fact screwing your computers as it makes it difficult for me to take you seriously. "OS agnostic," has been around for a while and is clearer. It's especially annoying as he has a real point to make and the most noticeable thing about the article is what looks like a ribald joke.

masklinn 17y ago
OS agnostic would mean he'd accept to touch non-OSX unices as well.
anigbrowl 17y ago
Perhaps he feels screwed by the computers...but seriously, I agree.

psranga 17y ago

Where was this guy when Apple used Gandhi, MLK etc? And he uses the most tired argument of all: "think of the children!". Sorry, I am not persuaded.

neovive 17y ago

Regardless of the opinions on the Microsoft advertising campaigns. It is clear that Windows 7 addresses many of the problems with Vista and most large companies (with large contracts with Dell and other PC vendors), will likely be upgrading this time around resulting in large adoption of Windows 7 in the enterprise. Most people are pretty tired of using Windows XP at this point.