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Microsoft Dropping Seinfeld, Directly Targeting 'Get a Mac' Ads
- Thread starter swingerofbirch
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You're strange.
But, okay. You need to turn down the volume because you sound absolutely nuts.
I totally missed both of those. The HP is a pretty nice machine, I'll concede the point.
Previously, people would compare a Mac to the bargain basement model they found on, for example, the Dell website.
If HP is building such neat machines (spec wise), maybe there's some hope for them yet, especially if they're serious about building their own OS. The HP Touchsmart also seems interesting, although as I understand it, the limitations of Vista means that outside of HP's own software, it doesn't work very well.
Apple needs to take a good hard look at some of these specs and adjust accordingly.
Sorry. Leopard isn't worth $800 to me, but you sure are welcome to
Perhaps not to you, but many who would prefer to have and integrated suite of decent and useful apps pre-installed, on a notebook which is much sleeker, less bulky, nearly 1/2 lb lighter, has a multi-touch track pad, LED backlit screen, LED lit keyboard, is not loaded with pre-installed bloatware, and is running an OS which is not Vista, the MacBookPro may still be the desired choice.
I agree! Nothing is more annoying and forgettable then seeing an advertisement that does not wow you about a product. There are tons of commercials out there and I can think of so many but the funny thing is is that I cant remember what product was associated with the commercial.
For what it's worth I thought the Ad that Seinfeld and Gates did where they moved into with the "normal" family was comedic gold. I laughed very hard when Seinfeld described getting stuck in his own traffic jam due to the amount of cars he owned... Beautiful!
agree. If they are so wored about vista's image then show what great things Vista and windows live can do together. Do it maturly, not like a little kid and copy the apple ads or crate an ad that mostly talks about churos and wearing clothes in the shower what does that have to do with the product?
Take an HP laptop in the shower and find out... they may have broken the big Vista "Lie"
So Seinfeld wasn't funny enough, well d'uh... If this is the best that the MSFT marketing machine can come up with they deserve to crash and burn. This is not how you become cool people!!! Ads with a vulnerable, lovable billionaire and a cocky over-paid semi-funny out of work comedian will not turn your crappy brand into gold! Go back to marketing school and learn that you actually have to have a half-way sexy product if you want to grab the mind share of those with disposable income.
I'm kind of at a loss to see MSFT floundering so badly when they were the marketing gods of the computer industry for years. What happened Redmond, did you RIF all the talent? Think you can outsource this stuff? Think again. You need people who are vested in your vision, people who care!!!! Apple has that in spades. You have Jerry and Bill making fools of themselves.
Why not just toss in the towel and get your ads sponsored by Redhat?
Is the answer, to this to snipe back at Apple using their own format? You really think that's gonna make everyone wake up and say "Oh wow, I guess Cupertino was making a mug out of me and Vista really is the future!" ? Maybe they'll just look at it and think you're a bunch of desperate inept idiots who have forgotten what their brand is all about and are grasping at knocking the competition on their own turf in a sad attempt to claw some kind of publicity back onto your sorry asses?
You're burring yourselves and the Windows brand along with the corpse of the MSFT brand that died when you introduced the world to sweaty CEOs who cared less about their customers than they did their stock price...
Sad old MSFT. Go die quietly.....
I'm kind of at a loss to see MSFT floundering so badly when they were the marketing gods of the computer industry for years. What happened Redmond, did you RIF all the talent? Think you can outsource this stuff? Think again. You need people who are vested in your vision, people who care!!!! Apple has that in spades. You have Jerry and Bill making fools of themselves.
Why not just toss in the towel and get your ads sponsored by Redhat?
Is the answer, to this to snipe back at Apple using their own format? You really think that's gonna make everyone wake up and say "Oh wow, I guess Cupertino was making a mug out of me and Vista really is the future!" ? Maybe they'll just look at it and think you're a bunch of desperate inept idiots who have forgotten what their brand is all about and are grasping at knocking the competition on their own turf in a sad attempt to claw some kind of publicity back onto your sorry asses?
You're burring yourselves and the Windows brand along with the corpse of the MSFT brand that died when you introduced the world to sweaty CEOs who cared less about their customers than they did their stock price...
Sad old MSFT. Go die quietly.....
So Microsoft spends a few more millions recruiting celebrities for their ads to challenge the ‘Get-A-Mac’ ads head on...
...only to realise after airing the ads that most of those celebrities already ‘Got-A-Mac’.
Wouldn’t most celebrities, with their wealth, busy schedules and image-consciousness, opt for the more fashionable, higher-priced and simplicity-orientated Macs over PCs? Why on earth would a celebrity use a Dell with Windows?
I know it's been said a thousand times already, but let me repeat it anyway.
It doesn't matter if Apple are selling lots of computers, because unless they do release this "missing link" Mac, we'll never be able to compare sales numbers "with" and "without" this Mac. With that out of the way...
Apple doesn't make a computer "for the rest of us": screen-less but with decent specs like an iMac. It's either Mac mini or Mac Pro. The Mac Pro is out of the question for mere mortals.
So either you can buy the Mac mini which is a small desktop computer with laptop components or an iMac which is a desktop computer with a built-in screen like a laptop.
What Apple needs to release is a "small", head-less computer (doesn't matter if it's a bit bigger than the Mac mini) but with the specifications of the iMac (decent discrete GPU, 3.5" hard drive, DVD Burner).
The "minitower people" will, of course, be asking for PCI Express and PCI slots, but that's not Apple's style for consumer products (Mac Pro being in the pro league).
Another thing that would be very Apple-like would be to introduce LightScribe DVD burners across all models. In fact I'm still wondering why they haven't done so already, with built-in support in the OS for burning the labels.
As far as Microsoft's ads are concerned... does this means we'll never get closure on "The Adventures of Bill and Jerry"?
I was hoping for at least a five-parts miniserie, too bad it got cancelled after only two episodes.
I just thought that I'd throw this in. These are some renderings I made a while back showing what I called a Mac++. (Kudos to those of you who get the reference.)
I know that the renderings are a bit crude. I didn't want to invest tons of time creating this bit of amusement. Enjoy!
On topic: I'll be curious to see what the new ads do. I think that targeting the Get A Mac ads could easily backfire. In general, it's better to ignore the advertising of the competition. Pretend they don't exist. Meanwhile, you create a new and stellar ad campaign that touts your product brilliantly.
Oh. Maybe that's what the JS ads were supposed to be. So, they failed at that and now they'll try going on the attack? Oh well.
Attachments
So if they are dropping Seinfeld, why is he still up on the main page: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ ?
So Microsoft spends a few more millions recruiting celebrities for their ads to challenge the ‘Get-A-Mac’ ads head on...
...only to realise after airing the ads that most of those celebrities already ‘Got-A-Mac’.
Wouldn’t most celebrities, with their wealth, busy schedules and image-consciousness, opt for the more fashionable, higher-priced and simplicity-orientated Macs over PCs? Why would a celebrity use a Dell with Windows?
Absolutely - I hear they had contacted Jeff Goldblum for the remaining ads. Nothing like a little incongruency to help MS sever their image.
Just trying to squeeze their 10 mil's worth out of him.
So, MS can't pull off an original ad of it's own very well, so, the solution is to copy Apple's ads??
I know what's coming next: MS will gather a focus group and tell them they're going to see the new MS ads, but, will just show them the same Seinfeld ads.
If MS is trying to make us laugh, I already am.
I know what's coming next: MS will gather a focus group and tell them they're going to see the new MS ads, but, will just show them the same Seinfeld ads.
If MS is trying to make us laugh, I already am.
I think these are going to backfire.
Apple is consistent with their ad campaigns, and they are consistent with their OS. Each incarnation of OSX has built off the last, and has become more refined over time.
Microsoft on the other hand isn't, their ads are all over the place, which is a perfect reflection of their OS. Vista comes in a stupid array of choices which make no sense, and has unpredictable performance.
Apple is consistent with their ad campaigns, and they are consistent with their OS. Each incarnation of OSX has built off the last, and has become more refined over time.
Microsoft on the other hand isn't, their ads are all over the place, which is a perfect reflection of their OS. Vista comes in a stupid array of choices which make no sense, and has unpredictable performance.
It's almost amusing, as well as pitiful, to watch vast amounts of resources get squandered by a company's haphazard attempts to randomly 'wing it' as they meander through this experimental journey. "Forget XP everyone, Vista is here, no, actually forget Vista everyone, Windows 7 is here............. well will be.... eventually.... you'll see....... soon.......really.......the future is..... sweet........ we're all connected......... eventually..... the time has come.........Aero2.............. Looking Glass8................ Zunepod Touch............. the future is.......... now."
Tell me about it. I know we've all rehashed this issue a millions times before, but it is really bothering me since I'm quickly approaching my first Mac purchase in a long time (had to purchase a laptop right before the Intel Macs were ready). I would REALLY love to get a smaller version of the Mac Pro. It would be great to have a smaller form factor Mac desktop, with one quad-core 'Nehalem' and a decent desktop graphics card. As much as I love the idea of a 3.0Ghz dual-CPU 8-core Mac Pro with 16GB RAM and a RAID 0+1 setup, I just don't need it and would rather save the extra cash. And you can throw me in the 12" MBPro group too.
I think that would be very dangerous for Microsoft. Gaming is definitely the stand out thing that PCs have over Macs - but if Microsoft was to focus it would need to be very careful that it wasn't interpreted as "the Mac is good for business and great for photos/music/movies - but it can't beat Windows for games".
If this is true then I would feel pretty annoyed if the money I spent on MS software was being ploughed into these dead-end marketing projects, just as it is ploughed into dead-end vapourware. Thankfully I try and avoid giving money to M$ as much as possible.
If you want a totally cool ad for a pretty defunct product that gets the message across with the catchyest song of 2008, Microsoft should have taken a leaf out of New Zealand Posts playbook.
The theme was "Send and you shall receive"
The song is "One Day" by Kiwi Band Op Shop and while the ad and song are totally memorable, the act of sending mail to people is still going the way of the CD - as is Vista.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hnomj-pGHc
The song "One Day" was the most requested Valentines Day song in NZ for 2008.
The theme was "Send and you shall receive"
The song is "One Day" by Kiwi Band Op Shop and while the ad and song are totally memorable, the act of sending mail to people is still going the way of the CD - as is Vista.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hnomj-pGHc
The song "One Day" was the most requested Valentines Day song in NZ for 2008.
Good criminy!
Does anyone--I mean ANYONE--at Microsoft realize that by imitating the Apple ads they are, once again...
(You know this is coming)
... copying Apple?
For a company that has had to fight the image that they copy all of Apple's good ideas, you would think someone in Redmond just might stop for a moment and ask themselves if imitating Apple's ads--even to rebut them--isn't going to send the wrong message and reinforce one of the most negative perceptions that people have of Microsoft. I mean, if they can't come up with their own ideas for decent ads...
Does anyone--I mean ANYONE--at Microsoft realize that by imitating the Apple ads they are, once again...
(You know this is coming)
... copying Apple?
For a company that has had to fight the image that they copy all of Apple's good ideas, you would think someone in Redmond just might stop for a moment and ask themselves if imitating Apple's ads--even to rebut them--isn't going to send the wrong message and reinforce one of the most negative perceptions that people have of Microsoft. I mean, if they can't come up with their own ideas for decent ads...