Tag Archives | Advertising

Advertising Works!

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 18, 2009 at 7:48 pm

Laptop HuntersI still think that Microsoft’s current Laptop Hunters ad campaign for Windows represents an odd combination of stating the obvious (that you can buy a Windows PC with beefy components for a lot less than a Mac) and avoiding the obvious (that operating systems have a gigantic impact on the experience you get from a computer). But if recent research from BrandIndex is to believed, the spots are doing what Microsoft hoped they’d do: convincing people (young people, especially) that Windows computers are a better value than Macs.

Laptop Hunters doesn’t seem to be an ad campaign designed to run for the next decade, or even the next year–the individual commercials are nearly identical except for the shoppers involved, which is why I stopped writing about them after the third entry. (I just ran out out of things to say.) For the record, the most recent two (starring a mom-and-daughter team and an artist) are not only repetitive, but increasingly weird, with an emphasis on the giddy shoppers exulting in the fact that Microsoft has bought them laptops. (Should we make anything of the fact that only one of the five ads so far involves an adult male? I dunno.)

Considering that the current version of Windows is Windows Vista, Microsoft has every incentive to downplay the OS. I assume that when Windows 7 comes out, it’ll return to emphasizing the operating system as a selling point, even if it also continues to play up the value angle and snark at Macs. It’ll be interesting to see if the shift in public opinion apparently reflected in the BrandIndex study continues on even if the ads no longer center on spec comparisons and fistfuls of cash.

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This Laptop Hunter Isn’t a PC

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 13, 2009 at 9:08 am

There’s a new Apple “Get a Mac” ad out–and this one is the first one that would seem to respond directly to Microsoft’s “Laptop Hunters” ads and their snarky put-downs of Macs, since it involves a woman shopping for a computer and addresses the fact that there are gazillions of PCs out there:

The ultimate gist of the commercial–Windows PCs involve hassles that Macs don’t–is the same as that of many previous “Get a Mac” ads. But it’s interesting to see Apple acknowledge the fact that Macs don’t offer the variety that PCs do, and to say that choice is less exciting if all the computers you can choose from are flawed.

I’m burned out on the Windows-Mac commercial wars (I didn’t even bother to mention Sheila, the star of Microsoft’s most recent ad). But choosing a computer is as much or more about the experience you hope to get from the machine on a day-to-day basis as it is about raw specs. And I continue to be surprised that the Microsoft ads don’t address living with an operating system at all, and to think that it makes sense that that the Apple ones do.

Anyhow, I don’t know if anyone involved with Apple’s advertising thinks that the Laptop Hunters spots are having an impact and needed a response, or whether the company just thought it would be fun to parody the Microsoft commercials. Either way, Microsoft’s surprising decision to embrace Apple’s “I’m a PC” and to compare PCs and Macs in its ads is having an impact. Even if its ads’ comparisons are pretty specious.

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Assuming There’s a New York Times in 2040, I Hope It’s Not This One

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 11, 2009 at 3:44 am

I just went to NYTimes.com, as I do multiple times a day. A split-second after I arrived at the homepage, it was covered up with a full-page ad overlay. That was irritating, but I’m willing to tolerate some annoyance in return for excellent free content.

I found this particular full-page ad overlay downright disillusioning, though. Here it is:

New York Times 2040

Yup–it’s a fake New York Times homepage from 2040, with jokey futuristic news stories and a redesign which consists of the Times dumping its logo, tagline, and typography in favor of a look which I’m guessing won’t end up resembling whatever is hip when 2040 does roll around. It’s a component of Intel’s big new ad campaign with the slogan “Sponsors of Tomorrow.” (Weirdly, when I go to the Intel site it links to on my Mac, I get a page that’s empty except for a splotch of tan–but maybe it works better on your Intel-based computer than on mine.)

As a journalist, I stress out when media brands lease out their good names to advertisers to make a buck, and the notion of the Times permitting a fanciful New York Times to be shown in an ad on its own site is inherently unsettling. (It’s unfortunately reminiscent of the Los Angeles Times’ appalling decision to allow a fake article to appear on its front page.) No brand in journalism has had standards higher than those of the Times, so this sort of tomfoolery is particularly out of character.

But here’s what’s really dismal about the ad: The notion seems to be that during the next thirty-one years, the main thing that the Times will accomplish is to dump the media world’s most instantly-recognizable look and feel. With reasonable people questioning the the viability of big media in general and the Times in particular, it’s an odd time to allow an advertiser to define the future of the Times–even in jest–and to say that it’ll consist of a goofy redesign.

Am I the only admirer of the New York Times who both hopes and believes that A) it’ll be around in 31 years, but its primary form will be something that hasn’t been invented as of 2009, and which won’t bear much resemblance to today’s Web sites; and B) the Times’ venerable logo, typefaces, and promise of “All the News That’s Fit to Print” will still be with us?

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Google Chrome Gets the TV Treatment

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 8, 2009 at 5:46 pm

When it comes to advertising, Google believes in eating its own dogfood–it uses its own ad platform to promote some of its own services, but it’s rare to see Google self-promotion off the Web. But not unheard of: There used to be billboards in San Francisco touting the GOOG-411 information service, for instance. And Google blogged today it’s going to try advertising its Chrome browser on TV, starting this weekend.

Here’s the ad, which was produced in Japan, originally for online use:

It’s fun to watch for sure. But although I’m a Chrome fan, in part because of its uncluttered feel, I must confess that I didn’t get the point of the ad until I read Google’s post. It’s saying that Chrome is simpler and more streamlined than other browsers. Wonder what percentage of couch potatoes will figure that out–or even understand that Chrome is a Web browser?

I was going to say that this may be the first time a browser has been advertised on the boob tube. But then I found this Internet Explorer 7 ad–also a rather oblique sell, and apparently from A Country That Isn’t The U.S.:

And the Firefox community produced scads of user-generated, TV-style ads for Mozilla’s Firefox Flicks contest a few years ago, although I’m not sure if any wound up on TV:

Any guesses as to whether browser market share will perceptibly change based on Chrome’s exposure on TV? (Side note: Around seven percent of Technologizer visitors use it.)

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Location-Based Services: Cool! Disturbing!

Posted by David Worthington on April 27, 2009 at 7:35 pm

GigaOM has published an interesting read about how Apple’s iPhone has driven demand for location-based services. The rise of these services was inevitable, but now there need to be recognized, accepted practices about what they can and can’t do.

A few years ago, I changed a setting on my Nokia to avoid commercial SMS messages. I did that as a precaution after I read a magazine article about how my local Starbucks could send me a coupon as I passed by on the street. That never came to be, but it’s looking more probable now.

Many of my friends have iPhones, and I was compelled to install the location-aware social networking app Loopt after a friend told about how great it was over the holidays. It’s still installed onto my phone, but I’m glad that it only updates itself when I invoke the application and want my location to be known. The AroundMe application can be useful for locating local points of interests, and again, it is not evasive.

However, it’s only a matter of time until application makers begin to get more creative with their terms of use. The possibility of an advertisement-subsidized phones also exists.

It might be my imagination running wild, but picture walking by an electronic billboard that upon detecting your presence, notes that you ate five Papa John’s pizzas last week to all passers by. (Note: When I told Harry I was working on this post, he told me that he was spammed via Bluetooth by a Land Rover billboard in Times Square back in 2006.) Or, an inbox full of solicitations appearing after walking through a busy marketplace.

Worse still, tech-savvy criminals could crack the data stream of location aware application to target users above a certain income level. That might sound far fetched, but is information that these services send up into the cloud even encrypted?

Customer feedback (and distaste) for services that sap away privacy might be enough, but I feel that stakeholders including advertisers and phone makers need appropriate guidelines before there is misuse.

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Four More "Get a Mac" Ads, No Direct "Laptop Hunters" Rejoinders

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 19, 2009 at 10:03 pm

Back on Friday, I wondered if we’d ever see Apple’s “Get a Mac” guys again, and speculated that they’d either come back with a direct response to Microsoft’s Laptop Hunters spots or stay away for good. Which just goes to show that even the most innocuous speculating about Apple is likely to be wrong. The company’s released four new “Get a Mac” spots, and none of them take on “Laptop Hunters” directly.

Here they be:

The only one that feels like it tiptoes into “Laptop Hunters” territory is the third one, “Stacks,” since it points out a feature of iLife 09 which PC says sounds expensive, then explains that iLife comes with all Macs. Maybe that’s a subtle response to the Microsoft ads’ painting of the cost of Macs as including a large premium for meaningless cool factor. Or maybe not–a pretty high percentage of all “Get a Mac” commercials have touted iLife as a principal reason to buy an Apple computer.

I’m not sure if the second ad, “Legal Copy,” is referring to something specific with its conceit that an ad claiming that Windows PCs are more simple and intuitive than Macs must carry a lot of fine print. As I’ve written, one of the striking things about the “Laptop Hunters” series is that it makes no claims about Windows. The message is all about the specs and features you can get at a particular price point, and anything relating to software seems to beside the point.

(Side note: I’m not a fan of fine print, but it’s better than not using it when an advertising claim badly needs clarification–as I wrote in this post about Apple’s iPhone 3G advertising.)

Then again, maybe ignoring “Laptop Hunters” is Apple’s way of responding to it. While Microsoft keeps doing its price comparisons and saying that Macs provide no added value for the price you pay, Apple is returning to the basic mantra that “Get a Mac” has repeated all along–that Macs deliver fewer hassles and more powerful included software than Windows PCs.  The implied message is that you should be including those factors when you do the math on a computer purchase. It’s a far more reasonable point than the one that Microsoft has busily hammered away.

And maybe the fact that Mac and PC are back at all is an oblique acknowledgment that Microsoft’s ads are attracting attention, and Apple needs to reinforce the pro-Mac, anti-PC case it had already been making.

One other thought about the new commercials: Poor PC seems to have drunk the Mac Kool-Aid himself somewhere along the way–in “Time Traveler” he actively argues that PCs don’t work the way they should and are inferior to Macs. The early ads in which he touted his own virtues and disparaged the Mac were at least as effective, and a lot funnier…

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Apple Responds–Briefly–to Microsoft's Laptop Hunters Ads

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 17, 2009 at 2:17 am

Arik Hesseldahl of BusinessWeek has weighed in on Microsoft’s “Lauren” commercial, the first of its Laptop Hunters ads. All of them involve shoppers rejecting Macs in favor of Windows PCs, and the implication in each case is that Macs offer overpriced glitz rather than substance. Like other observers, Hesseldahl points out that Lauren’s HP laptop has a lower-resolution screen than Apple’s MacBook Pro, much poorer battery life, and more bulk. He also notes that she’ll have to pay for anti-virus software, won’t get Apple’s iLife (which is bundled with all Macs), and won’t qualify for free troubleshooting at Apple’s Genius Bar. Good points all.

He also managed to get a quote from Apple about the Laptop Hunters campaign–the first ackowledgment of it by the company I’ve seen:

Usually silent on such things, Apple did give me a comment on the Microsoft ads. “A PC is no bargain when it doesn’t do what you want,” Apple spokesman Bill Evans says. “The one thing that both Apple and Microsoft can agree on is that everyone thinks the Mac is cool. With its great designs and advanced software, nothing matches it at any price.” Microsoft declined to comment.

That’s pretty straightforward and dignified, making for an interesting contrast with the snarky tone of Microsoft’s recent anti-Apple salvos. It’s an interesting role reversal, given that in the past it was usually Apple who snarked at Microsoft, and Microsoft who replied either calmly or not at all.

But I wonder if we’ll ever get a response to Laptop Hunters from these guys:

 

Apple's Get a Mac ad

Actually, I wonder if we’ll ever see PC and Mac again at all. Except for a couple of animated holiday spots, I don’t believe they’ve shown up on TV since last October, before Microsoft  had really ramped up its Apple-bashing. Back then, they were trashing Vista, and I said that it felt like inside baseball. My guess: Either they will respond to Laptop Hunters…or they’re gone for good.

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Microsoft's "Apple Tax" White Paper–Let's Try That Again!

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 13, 2009 at 3:04 am

Last week, Microsoft sponsored a white paper that expanded upon the mantra in the company’s “Laptop Hunters” ads that Macs are overpriced computers that impose a price penalty based on an ethereal, needless “cool factor.” Said white paper featured charts involving Mac configurations that no longer exist, and calculations of the long-term cost of being a Mac user that seemed questionable at best and nonsensical at worst. I detailed some (but not all) of the issues in this post.

The white paper’s author, Endpoint Technologies’ Roger Kay, blamed some of the data problems on production gaffes by Microsoft. Microsoft has posted an updated version of the paper with updated specs and at least one clarification (it now makes clear that the $149 copy of MobileMe it’s talking about is the Family Pack version). Strangely, Microsoft hasn’t updated the inaccurate chart in the blog post that links to the white paper.

I said in my original post that I didn’t think Kay’s conclusions would be different if the white paper had gotten the specs correct, and I was right: They haven’t changed. And even though the tables now seem to have their specs right, there are multiple places where the math behind his calculation of the “Apple Tax” remains more partisan attack than honest attempt at analysis. Can anyone explain to me, for instance, why he he adds a hefty $750 to the Mac setup for five years’ worth of MobileMe for two computers when MobileMe, which is available for both OS X and Windows, is simply no more mandatory on the Mac than it is on Windows?

Oh, and the paper still has one relatively minor cost attached to the Mac setup–a $99 charge for the iLife Family Pack–which I think is simply indefensible no matter how partisan you might be. Kay doesn’t factor the cost of creativity software into the Windows PC setup in the first place–the theory is that the imaginary family in his scenario has already paid for it for an older computer–but he also doesn’t tack the cost of an upgrade on. Apparently the fact that he has his Mac-owning family upgrading their software after two years but not their Windows counterpart doing so constitutes part of the “Apple Tax.”

I can’t imagine that many people who actually reads the white paper (even in its new, more accurate form) who might consider buying a Mac instead of a Windows PC are going to take the case it makes very seriously. And those people who wouldn’t consider buying a Mac don’t need convincing in the first place.

Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt has theorized that Microsoft’s Mac attack constitutes a trap, and “the Apple press” (of which I don’t wanna be counted as a member) is taking the bait by responding and carping about it. Given that Microsoft is pouring so much money and resources into arguing that you can buy Windows PCs for a lot less than Macs–a point which is obvious to anyone who steps foot inside a computer store, and which helps to explain why Windows’ market share remains huge and the Mac’s continues to be quite small–I wonder whether it’s Microsoft that’s fallen into a trap. I mean, responding to the anti-Windows taunts in Apple ads in kind probably feels really good, but I’m still not sure just who Microsoft’s current round of Apple-bashing is meant to address.

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Good Grief, Even More Laptop Hunters!

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 9, 2009 at 9:47 pm

Microsoft has posted another commercial in its “Laptop Hunters” campaign, this one starring Lisa (mom) and Jackson (kid):

Same template as the earlier two ones: Show that Windows laptops come in all shapes and sizes, emphasize basic specs (and one cool feature in this case–Blu-Ray), pause to make the point that Macs lack substance, then show the happy shopper(s) with free laptop (a Sony this time–sorry, HP). And don’t even acknowledge the existence of Windows on the computers.

I’m tired of analyzing commercials, so I’ll just point towards my posts on the earlier ads: Lauren and Giampaolo. Most of my thoughts apply to this one too–but if you’re less tuckered than me, I’d love to hear yours.

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