Microsoft's new "I'm a PC" ad

[Small White Car]

The one thing that annoys me about these ads are, while Microsoft isn't attacked directly by the Apple ads (not all PC's have Windows), they still felt the need to defend themselves. Granted, I know Microsoft has enough share of the PC market to assume Apple is attacking them, it still strikes me as arrogant and presumptive on their part to assume "I'm a PC" automatically means "I use Windows".

Especially since, as I noted before, some of the ads tout the fact that Macs can run Windows. It's presented as a positive thing!

In Apple's view, why not run OS X and Windows on a Mac? It's fine by them. That's what they're bragging about. "Buy our computer and get both worlds, instead of buying a Dell and getting just one world."

That's hardly anti-Microsoft.

 

[Amaris]

The one thing that annoys me about these ads are, while Microsoft isn't attacked directly by the Apple ads (not all PC's have Windows), they still felt the need to defend themselves. Granted, I know Microsoft has enough share of the PC market to assume Apple is attacking them, it still strikes me as arrogant and presumptive on their part to assume "I'm a PC" automatically means "I use Windows".

Understandable, but a question:

If you own a PC, what OS are you running?
90% chance says you're running a flavor of Windows.

Smallwhitecar, you say that it doesn't seem that the ads are anti-Microsoft. Consider this: These companies are like political opponents. You'll hear "I respect him", "he's an honorable man", "he's done a lot of good", "on some things we agree", but neither candidate wants the other to win. That's just blindingly obvious.

As for other comments in the thread, when I get Vista, I have the capability to edit home movies, burn CDs/DVDs, listen to most media formats, have a word processing program, a web browser, an email client, a photo organizer and editor, a PIM (personal information manager) program, home media center for connection to external televisions and other media like digital projectors, audio recorder and editor, I have text to speech and speech to text capabilities, voice command for apps and browsers, and a Vista sidebar that lets me keep stocks, weather, news updates, system resource managers, and even internet radio at my fingertips on my desktop, and it's all there out of the box, pain free. I can connect my digital camera to my PC and Vista will detect it without a problem, and I didn't install any drivers. In fact, my system performed admirably right out of the box. If I can't find what I'm looking for on my system, I have tens of thousands of applications to choose from, many of them completely free.

Whether you like Vista or not, it's not a defunct OS, and it will grow in popularity. I like Macs, but I like Windows systems as well. Moreso because of my much greater flexibility and ease of use, added to that my capacity to tinker with it and make it faster and more capable, if I wish. I don't have to, there's no requirement, and if I use it as is right out of the box, that's great.

After working with it for months now, I have become fully accustomed to Vista, and it's remarkably stable, flexible, powerful and easy to use, if you're willing to throw a few brain cells that way. If you're resolute about hating it, you will.

J.

 

[firehawk12]

The one thing that annoys me about these ads are, while Microsoft isn't attacked directly by the Apple ads (not all PC's have Windows), they still felt the need to defend themselves. Granted, I know Microsoft has enough share of the PC market to assume Apple is attacking them, it still strikes me as arrogant and presumptive on their part to assume "I'm a PC" automatically means "I use Windows".

Especially since, as I noted before, some of the ads tout the fact that Macs can run Windows. It's presented as a positive thing!

In Apple's view, why not run OS X and Windows on a Mac? It's fine by them. That's what they're bragging about. "Buy our computer and get both worlds, instead of buying a Dell and getting just one world."

That's hardly anti-Microsoft.

Which goes to my point that the content of the ads are nearly pointless and that it's the association of the two actors to the two "brands".
Why? Because the latest ads specifically point out the faults of Vista, even though I'm sure I've heard people talk about OSX crashes in real life...

 

[Small White Car]

Which goes to my point that the content of the ads are nearly pointless and that it's the association of the two actors to the two "brands".

I'll admit that there are plenty of that kind of ad, but I maintain that the Mac ads are at their best when they point out unique features, impart useful information, stay totally factual, and actually talk about the things real people care about.

Are these the majority of the ads? No, but there are certainly many examples of this kind of ad. These specific ads are very simple and useful. Not every Mac ad is like this, but some of them really get the point across. It's not ALL about branding.

 

[Hermiod]

Regardless, of what Apple ads say about PCs or what Microsoft ads say about Macs, neither will ever be as sad as this.

Novell, you know nothing about home computing. You know nothing about what ordinary users want. I'll give you a clue: it's not Linux!

 

[firehawk12]

Well, unless it's OSX.
Although, I guess that's technically Unix.

 

[Hermiod]

Well, unless it's OSX.
Although, I guess that's technically Unix.

Mac OS X is based on BSD, not Linux.

 

[firehawk12]

And BSD is just flavoured Unix. Right?

 

[Hermiod]

And BSD is just flavoured Unix. Right?

It's an implementation of UNIX, sure, as is Linux. There are a lot of under the hood differences though.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Personally I just type in the BBCode directly. I mean, writing [ url=link]text here[/ url] isn't that hard.

Well that's fine if you know the code....

On the actual topic...despite being a Trek geek, I think I represent the typical home computer user in that I'm not particularly tech-savvy, I just know how to use a computer to do the things that I want to do with it. The Mac/PC ads always bugged me because in my experience, the people who use Macs are professionals, academics, and hardcore computer geeks--and they tend to look a lot more like the PC guy in the ads than the Mac guy. (In fact, the PC guy bears an uncanny resemblance to the IT guy in my workplace....) The Mac guy in those ads seems to want to reflect a more casual approach to computer use...but in my experience, "casual" computer users use PCs. So it's deceptive, like political spin...they're trying to sell themselves as the exact opposite of what they really are.

 

[David cgc]

The one thing that annoys me about these ads are, while Microsoft isn't attacked directly by the Apple ads (not all PC's have Windows), they still felt the need to defend themselves. Granted, I know Microsoft has enough share of the PC market to assume Apple is attacking them, it still strikes me as arrogant and presumptive on their part to assume "I'm a PC" automatically means "I use Windows".

Exactly the position of this Roughly Drafted article.

The primary problem with Microsoft taking Apple’s ad slogan and attempting to turn it into its own proprietary self serving message is that Apple and Microsoft aren’t competing against each other to sell widgets. Apple sells premium PCs it calls Macs, while Microsoft sells an invisible software license installed on most new PCs, software that most users aren’t even really aware of when they make a computer purchase.

Nobody really buys a PC to get Windows. Today, most consumers buy a new PC to use email and the web, things that don’t even require Windows at all. There are now prominent PC products from Dell and Acer that don’t even include Windows, and that trend is just getting started.

By stealing Apple’s advertising line, Microsoft has unwittingly poured money into advertising “the computer” rather than its own software. It doesn’t (and can’t) mention Macs directly or make any direct comparisons, as doing so would only bring additional attention toward Apple as the generic PC’s minority competitor.

It's a little shocking that Microsoft would go so far as to advertise a genericized computer rather than their own product. It'd be as if Ford or GM was worried about losing ground to the Toyota Prius, so they started advertising "Cars: Now with the internal combustion engine." Or Burger King tried to hit McDonalds with a new "Food: It's what's for eating" campaign.

 

[Holdfast]

If you have dominant market share of computers in general, it makes sense in terms of return on your advertising dollars to advertise computers in general. The closer you have to 100% market share, the more sense in makes to advertise the subject in general rather than your brand. eg. If you're the only one making flying cars, you don't need to advertise your brand as such, you advertise the concept of a flying car and let your brand be automatically associated with the concept. Since MS has, what, about 95% of the market share of OSs on PCs, it makes sense to advertise PCs and let the branding association work by itself.

As for what adverts are meant to do, I think it's important to remember to separate what ads SAY they do from what they're actually MEANT to do.

For instance, the whole discussion above of what the Apple "I'm a PC, I'm a Mac" ads are doing. Regardless of what they say in the ads or any sort of rationalisation/intellectualisation about the characters Justin Long may play in movies, the whole subtextual meaning of those ads is designed around "PC=nerd, Apple=cool". Trying to deny that subtext seems ridiculous to me. It's not about actual products, features or anything like that, regardless of the words used. Advertising is about image, and the emotional intent behind those ads is blindingly obvious.

The PC one, again regardless of what's said in it, is designed to paint PCs as ubiquitous and natural - an automatic but good choice. It's about reassurance. As an advertising message, it's cleverly done and sells its message well. Any ad can be unpicked with logic or reasoning... but ads like these aren't designed to appeal to rationality but to emotion.

 

[MyCylon]

^
I think that's very well said. I wholeheartedly agree.

stay totally factual

It is factual but (since it's advertising) it's also highly selective quoting only one source. They forget to mention that some of the guys at Wired obviously found out that Vista runs faster on a Mac than Mac OS X does .

Seriously, I can't verify any of this myself (since I haven't done testing myself or more reading up) but I'd shy away from calling it 'totally factual'. Yes, it's totally factual in that it directly references that one source and repeats what's stated there. But it loses significance in light of the fact of how selective it is (though that's not what most people will remember after they've seen the ad ).

 

[Stone_Cold_Sisko]

If you have dominant market share of computers in general, it makes sense in terms of return on your advertising dollars to advertise computers in general. The closer you have to 100% market share, the more sense in makes to advertise the subject in general rather than your brand. eg. If you're the only one making flying cars, you don't need to advertise your brand as such, you advertise the concept of a flying car and let your brand be automatically associated with the concept. Since MS has, what, about 95% of the market share of OSs on PCs, it makes sense to advertise PCs and let the branding association work by itself.

As for what adverts are meant to do, I think it's important to remember to separate what ads SAY they do from what they're actually MEANT to do.

For instance, the whole discussion above of what the Apple "I'm a PC, I'm a Mac" ads are doing. Regardless of what they say in the ads or any sort of rationalisation/intellectualisation about the characters Justin Long may play in movies, the whole subtextual meaning of those ads is designed around "PC=nerd, Apple=cool". Trying to deny that subtext seems ridiculous to me. It's not about actual products, features or anything like that, regardless of the words used. Advertising is about image, and the emotional intent behind those ads is blindingly obvious.

The PC one, again regardless of what's said in it, is designed to paint PCs as ubiquitous and natural - an automatic but good choice. It's about reassurance. As an advertising message, it's cleverly done and sells its message well. Any ad can be unpicked with logic or reasoning... but ads like these aren't designed to appeal to rationality but to emotion.

I think that's well said.

The people who are saying windows commercials should be listing the features of Vista or whatnot, really don't get how advertising, how it is different for the person with 90% of the market share vs 10%.

Microsoft just needs to counter the "image/aura" around PCs, and get people to buy computers, period. That's it. Every computer already has Vista on it. They don't need to "convince" anyone to go buy Vista. They don't even need people to buy VIsta peroid.

 

[The Old Mixer]

^Yeah, I just recently bought my first laptop. I didn't get it with Vista because I knew jack squat about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the operating systems...I got it with Vista because that's what it came with. And that's how it's going to be for most people who aren't computer geeks.

 

[Amaris]

Well said, Holdfast.

You know, I've worked with many flavors of Linux, MacOS and Windows, and I think each one has strengths and weaknesses, and one is not superior to the other. I prefer Windows XP & Vista as my favorite flavors of OS to use. I like OSX. I like Linux, particularly the Debian/Ubuntu variant. I consider all of them capable of performing their tasks accordingly. What it really comes down to is style. In terms of style, Windows Vista has a good amount, but OSX has better, in my opinion of course. It's all subjective. I know this will never end the PC vs. Mac wars that will continue long after both systems are long dead, but it's true.

J.

 

[Koinek]

If you have dominant market share[....]but to emotion.

I think that's well said.

The people who are saying windows commercials should be listing the features of Vista or whatnot, really don't get how advertising, how it is different for the person with 90% of the market share vs 10%.

Microsoft just needs to counter the "image/aura" around PCs, and get people to buy computers, period. That's it. Every computer already has Vista on it. They don't need to "convince" anyone to go buy Vista. They don't even need people to buy VIsta peroid.

Both of you summed it up beautifully. I'd like to add one more thing though.

Apple were the folks using broad generalizations ("PC", the suit and tie, podgy) and denigrating a set of tech users to prove their point. With this phase, MS & C,B+P are basically working against that core generalization, hitting the Apple commercials at their knees.

 

[firehawk12]

Hey, I've been saying that since page one!

 

[David cgc]

Oh, joy. More ads.

You will be assimilated.

Oh, so Windows is the market leader and default? I hadn't realized it was ubiquitous. Somehow, it's actual ubiquity and genericism weren't able to drive that point home.

I especially like the end, where Deepak Chopra says "we are all PC, inseparably one," followed by a wrestler pinning his opponent to the ground yelling, "You got a problem with that?!"

Remind me again which computer manufacturer had the cult-like devotees who annoyed the pants off of everyone around with their constant evangelism and insistance that it was their way or the highway?

I'm a human being that can't understand the concept of metaphor

Again with the people thinking that in the Mac ads, PC is dressed like a stodgy, generic business-type because he is, despite everything about the ads making no sense whatsoever from this perspective, a PC user. I hate to say, but Apple didn't invent the image of the Windows PC as the standard, serious, business-type computer for doing "real work." It was people who were trying to make big, lucrative deals with corporate IT groups to sell lots of Windows PCs. And you were going to personify something that was standard, serious, and business-type that does "real work," would it not be with a guy in a suit?

I stand by my original reaction. Remember those ads with the claymation talking about how wonderful their brand of gasoline was, and how it cleaned out their engines and all sorts of wonderful things? These ads are akin to if that gas station's competitors unrolled their own ad showing regular people knocking back mugs of their brand 87 octane and talking about how it cleaned out their guts. It's that level of insanity. The Apple ads are talking about computers, and the Microsoft ads are talking about customers. Apple says, "Buy our computer, because it is better." Microsoft says, "You have all ready bought our computer. Be happy about it. Happy, dammit!"

And, my personal favorite:

Our CEO is a raging nutcase.

Its an interesting philosophical question. Do I prefer the charming, persuasive man who speaks either calmly or with ernest excitement, or the guy who runs around shouting about how much he loves his job, which he can never be fired from not matter how many times he screams his head off like a monkey in heat?

 

[firehawk12]

You really want to say Steve Jobs is LESS batshit insane that Steve Balmer? Really?
Jobs is the guy who fires people who look at him the wrong way and needs lackeys to trail after him rehiring the people he just fired.
I also don't think insanity is necessarily a bad thing, since all people who are successful in business are usually "off" in some manner... I'm just saying, Jobs isn't Jesus 2.0. He's fucked up just like the rest of them.

And, I think if you want to interpret the Mac ads that way, that's fine. The fact that many people here see the ads as a branding strategy meant to make Mac users feel good about being Mac users is just another interpretation. They may even both be "correct" interpretations. I just stand by my assertion that the content of the ads do not matter as much as the image associated with each of the two brands since the actual message doesn't matter. The ads want you to either feel like you're as cool as Justin Long or want to be like Justin Long.

As for the whole "cult" argument... really? Like a cranky editor of Maximum PC likes to say - the difference with Windows users is that they call bullshit when they see it (I hate Microsoft with a blinding passion sometimes), whereas Apple users are constantly in a state of shock when Apple does something anti-consumer, like dropping the price of the original iPhone 2 months after it was released. "Well, at least we get a coupon!"
I honestly don't know which fans are worse, the Nintendo fans that deify "Reggie" and Miyamoto or the Apple fans that think Jobs can do no wrong.