On second thought, Microsoft's 'I'm a PC' ads are still unbelievably lame
Some marketing genius decided it would be a splendid idea to plaster the subway station I arrive at in the morning with posters promoting Microsoft's "I'm a PC" campaign. So twice a day, five days a week, I'm face to face with one of the worst advertising spots in Madison Avenue's history.
Then when I get home and turn on the television, the same ads--this time in full motion color with sound--are all over the airwaves.
(Credit: Microsoft)Get me an ice pick so I can drive it between my eyeballs and get it over with already.
I'm obviously late wading in here, but I wasn't swept up in the first round of harrumphing when the ads first hit in September. Even though I never thought the spots were very interesting, I figured Microsoft would improve upon them. Eventually. After all, this was part of a $300 million ad campaign that Microsoft planned, in part, to counter Apple's successful Mac versus PC series.
Silly me. I think Rory Carlyle's tongue-in-cheek summary says it all: "I'm a PC and my commercials are terrible."
No doubt there's someone high up in the Redmond bureaucracy who believes it's possible to corporately manufacture cool. But it just won't wash. When I was a kid, an advertisement for Bic pens ripped off a popular counterculture phrase of the era with the corny television refrain, "Write on." (Get it? Write on, not "right on." Ugh.)
As contrived as that was, it paled compared with this stinker from IBM for its now-defunct line of PS/2 computers...(How you gonna do it?...You're gonna PS/2 it") Vanilla Ice couldn't have done worse. A friend who worked in Big Blue's marketing department at the time candidly allowed that the jingle would have had better success as a WASP rap ditty.
The production quality of Microsoft's "I'm a PC" spots is higher, but technical excellence alone can't compensate for the core problem: conceptually, the ads fall flat. Maybe it's me but parading a bunch of goofs all declaring that they're "a PC" and I'm thinking it's "Stepford Wives" time. If the idea was to counter the impression fostered by Apple's series of lacerating Mac ads, Microsoft should rethink its original assumption. Now that Steve Ballmer says he's no longer thinking about Yahoo, he should devote a few brain cells to cleaning up this mess.
The ads simply grate. As John Gruber put it in a post a while ago:
"And so what makes Microsoft's new "I'm a PC" commercials so jaw-droppingly bad is that they're not countering Apple's message, but instead they're reinforcing it. That the spots themselves jump between dozens of different people who "are" PCs, that the spots make a point of emphasizing that there are a billion Windows-running PCs worldwide, this only emphasizes that "PC" is not a brand name but a generic."
"Microsoft's new ads emphasize the same message as Apple's: that the Mac is the one and only brand-name computer in the world."
Write on. Err, right on.
Charles Cooper has covered technology and business for more than 25 years. Before joining CNET News, he worked at the Associated Press, Computer & Software News, Computer Shopper, PC Week, and ZDNet. E-mail Charlie.
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It doesn't change the file name, just the name it displays in iPhoto. If you look at the file via the finder you will see it is still the original name. It is no secret that I am a big Apple Fan Boy, but I wish that Apple would fix this situation. Do what I have done several times, give Apple feedback. Under the iPhoto menu in iPhoto is an item to "Provide iPhoto Feedback", it will take you to a form on Apple's website. It is the same for other iLife products. Complain about it, the squeaky wheel get the grease.
All in all I don't understand where MS is putting this 300 million into, and why aim some of the ads it at Apple with their 3% world share. It just has this bizarre overkill taste to it and I can't be the only one that gets that vibe.
The HP commercials do a better job of promoting Windows than MS's ads do.
written from my macbook pro, but just as easily could have been written by my vista fujitsu tablet.
Stop, you're NOT a PC so stop thinking like one.
http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/#iphoto-organize-3
By your logic, the Dodge Ram commercials should've sold 100 million trucks. freecreditreport.com should have the entire computer-using Internet as its customer base right now.
Also, not every pioneer manages to make it, else we'd all still be flying airplanes made by Curtiss-Wright instead of Boeing and Airbus.
Apple nearly killed themselves by bad management and hubris. Fortunately for them, they learned their lesson and are now coming back. MSFT is starting to hemorrhage customers now because of Ballmer's hubris and bad management. And so it goes...
/P
None of the people I know want to go to the MS site and see if they can view the latest I'm a PC ads. Quite a few of them do go to Apple's site to see if they have missed any of the ads. The author is right, the MS ads are very lame and MS should go to the ad agency and ask for their money back. And the lamest part is at the end where they flash the message about a world without walls because you are using Windows. Someone had their head you know where on that one. If you have no walls you need no Windows.
I consider myself a realist - the world probably will continue to buy Windows for the foreseeable future unless someone produces something better (definition of better clearly depending on the audience) and Microsoft effectively sets fire to their business in a similar way that Apple did in the early 90s. That said, Apple's marketing has worked sufficiently well that it is helping them to make record sales so it's working out nicely for them.
At the end of the day, you need to generate sales from your marketing and Apple is doing that whereas Microsoft still seems to be "out to lunch".
Apple had nearly 30 years to get market share, but Jobs failed back then and is failing now. The Mac OS only has a tiny share of the market, and Mac sales have only edged upward by a little in recent years because the Mac now runs Windows.
I am using iPhoto '08, but I believe its the same in previous versions.
Hope that helps.
If you go to the trouble of holding down the shift key to type MAC, then you must think the M A C stands for something, and therefore have demonstrated insufficient understanding of the product. How do you expect to develop an effective campaign against a product you don't understand? But more importantly, before I choose another agency, what exactly do you think the letters M.A.C. stand for?
I'm a PC, and I loved those ads. Apple ads are all about being pretentious. Trying to be cool. Being snooty, holier than thou, etc.
The PC ads just take the high road. The message is "I am secure with who I am, and my uniqueness in this world, and I'm a PC".
I repeat -- you got it Dead Wrong. The flavors of people in the PC ads represent the flavors of PCs you can get in the real world. They represent the real uses that PCs get put to. They do so without apology, without false pretenses and false arguments, and most importantly, without putting the competition down.
Unlike the "PC's" of this world, I'm not intellectual sheep. ;)
Actually, they're about telling people that there is an alternative to Windows. Perhaps they come across to you in the way that was intended but let's not forget that only a few years ago, most people hadn't heard of Apple or knew that you could buy a computer without Microsoft Windows. In this respect the adverts work very well and I have no doubt that they contribute to the dramatic increases in sales that Apple has been experiencing.
Sorry, but the article is spot on - the "I'm a PC" adverts do nothing to increase Microsoft's sales.
Oh, wait - you're a PC. ;)
/P
Those I'm a PC/Mac ads have gone on for so long. Who, but the most insecure company would unflinchingly run negative ads plastered across the front page of the NYTimes and a vast assortment of other media for several years without a break. Apple just can't get the picture that all style, no substance doesn't sell computers. I would hope that computer users are more layered, complex, and substantive than to fall for fanboy propaganda. clearly they are. Look how long it has taken for Microsoft to fight back with their ads. They don't care about Apple's whiny ad campaign. Microsoft just laughs all the way to the bank with a 90% market share.
And I love the average joe image of the PC. That's who I want to identify with. Not the haughty, self-absorbed, uppity clown fanboys from the Apple camp.
I'm a designer, a filmmaker, and a gamer and I use a PC.
I'm a PC, and I loved those ads.
by tipoo_ November 20, 2008 6:33 AM PST
i'm a pc and i agree.
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Wow, the mentality of masochistic winblows apologists never fails to amaze me. Hint for you both - you are likely people, not PC's. You USE PC's because you're sheep who feel scared when you're responsible for your own computer, so you shill for the one company that feels it's their right ... no, make that their OBLIGATION ... to control what your computer does. While you're jumping through hoops trying to get a handle on WGD, the malicious software removal tool, anti-virus, spyware, adware, crapware that came pre-installed, defragging and running scandisk to check for disk errors the OS is trying to hide from you - real computer users are getting real work done. Not scanning the machine for cruft, not defragging the file system again and again, not reacting to BSOD's whenever they try to do something ordinary (what junkware OS crashes that hard verifying backup disks? Only winblows ex-pee, when the files were created with sp3 and verified on a machine running sp2. Ubuntu had no problems verifying the disks. It didn't crash in any way and it didn't force me to reinstall the entire OS due to curruptions caused by those crashes either. Ex-pee did though. Notice the backup disks were CREATED with ex-pee to begin with!)
Winblows apologists are all disgusting masochists. Period. Winblows is nothing more than a game console to me, if I want to WORK with my computer I boot Ubuntu. At my job, my computer is a Mac - in fact virtually all computers here are Macs (the big server runs AIX, we might have a masochist or two who still demands winblows on their laptops throughout the entire company). No virus issues whatsoever, these things "just work". It's not just a saying, it's a fact of life.
It's no wonder winblows apologists like these boring, please kill me now commercials from their owners. M$ tells them what they want to hear, "everyone else is just like you - be like the rest - follow the crowd, don't ever lead". It's comfortable for them and they need all the comfort they can find.
It even operates on the stupid assumption that only Windows makes a PC.
The point isn't to buy any computer as a status symbol. MSFT's commercials however are trying to do just that - hence anyone dumb enough to shout "I'm a PC!" is pretty much intellectual sheep.
Nothing wrong with sheep per se - they are tasty and they do provide some basic things like wool, so if that's what you want, then enjoy your status.
/P
'coolness'. Fast Company ran a cover story in their June 2008 edition on Alex Bogusky and asks "Can this dude make Microsoft cool?" I think the answer is pretty obviously, "No."
To paraphrase Forrest Gump, "Cool is as cool does." One thing "cool" wouldn't do...spend $300 million trying to convince people that it really, really is cool.
On the contrary
I think these commercials put a real human touch to the real life enabling capabilities of a Microsoft platform - sort of reminds me of the feel of TED (http://www.ted.com/)
Others have commented that Apple/Mac's are less elitist in their positioning - that's one spin on perspective
The other is that Mac's closed architecture is actually further afield from Microsoft on the closed vs open source scale.
don't get me wrong - I enjoy the wittiness of the Mac spots and Microsoft has earned some of the stones being thrown at it - but I also think there are some people that would tear down whoever was in the #1 spot just for the sport of it.
cheers
Miro
I am PC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRI-A3vakVg
http://miroslodki.wordpress.com
http://www.apple.com/opensource/
...where's MSFT's equivalent, and why isn't the core of Windows open source like OSX' is?
Here are the issues I have with this ad:
1. Consider how many Apple ads you've seen over the years. Consider how many MS ads you've seen over the years. Apple *definitely* has a larger advertising budget than MS -- much larger.
2. Now consider the relative revenues of the two companies -- MS is larger by far.
3. So basically, it's *Apple* that skews it's budgeting heavily towards advertising.
4. There's nothing wrong with Vista.
5. We've already got SP1 for Vista, with SP2 supposed to be coming next year sometime, and Win7 in the works as well. So MS is spending **** loads of money on engineering.
So what I can't understand is -- how is it that you (Charles Cooper) have no problem with such disgusting and deceitful ads from Apple, but you'll write a whole ********* column dissing the PC ads??
It is perception rather than reality that makes an ad work. And the Mac vs PC ads are quite good at pointing out perceived problems with Windows. But when perception and reality are close to matching each other then the ads become very effective.
There is nothing wrong with Vista? A bloated resource hog that offers nothing of value for the wasted cycles and excessive memory use, whose lame security roadblocks have already been broken isn't wrong?
There is nothing right about Vista. Epic Fail.
You do realize that Windows 7 IS Windows Vista, right? I love the mac fanboys already using Windows 7 as some sort of justification that Vista is failed, dead, or whatever. Especially when MS is actually just adopting Apple's model (though not intentionally, i'd admit) of incremental "major" upgrades.
So, in actuality, Windows 7 IS fixing the OS they already sell. Much like Snow Leopard is going to be an incremental fix of all the problems that Leopard currently has. (admit it, there are problems.)
And to answer your perception v. reality point: Yes, the Mac ads are wonderful at skewing perception towards what they want people to see as reality. Unfortunately, Apple has done a great job of extending the perception of a reality that effectively ended 12-14 months ago. Specifically, Vista is a very stable OS at this point and actually has the 3rd party driver support it should have had at launch. Not to mention the fact that app compatibility is vastly improved, and current hardware spec'd properly w/o crapware from a big OEM runs Vista quite well.
I can personally attest to over 8mos. of consistent easy installs and happy customers with new builds running Vista. Now, what I attest it to is the big OEMs nasty habits of all kinds crapware that tends to make a new machine run badly to begin with. Add to that underspec'ing due to the race to the bottom in pricing and you get a perfect storm of perceived "Vista" problems.
My customers tend to come in with Mac v PC ads in their heads, and while we don't pressure-sell them, we encourage them to give Vista a chance and have our lowest-spec'd system running it in our showroom. Usually, once we show them that it runs fine, doesn't have any problems and especially doesn't have the problems that the largely disingenuous Mac ads say they do, they trust us and follow our advice. That being said, if someone absolutely wants XP, we don't push them.
However, my Vista customers are infinitely easier to support and i've had less calls and spyware issues from them than my XP customers.
It all comes down to knowledge, quality and service. That's why we try to steer people away from the big OEMs. Coincidentally, that's what Apple has done well in the past with their service.
Your comment is an epic fail. Why don't you go to your bedroom and let mommy and daddy talk?
Seriously. Weren't you paying attention when OSX was exploited and cracked faster than Vista was in a hacking challenge? Choosing to forget that Vista has had less vulnerabilities than OSX has since launch?
Vista is finally a good secure MS OS. I sincerely hope you Mac folks finally get above 20% market share, hell, i'd love to see 50% because then you'll finally be targeted by the malware writers because it'll finally be profitable to do so. That's when we'll see how Apple does answering exploits and locking down their OS. They really haven't been tested yet.
You obviously haven't touched Vista on decent hardware. It runs great.
I'm a power user working with processor-intensive programs most of the time, like Final Cut and AE.
Fair enough. I'll never argue that MacOS is a stable platform. That being said, there have been reports of problems, be it touchpad issues, app issues, bugs at launch that needed patched, etc. It's interesting that you had to point out that it was an app that caused your hang, because that's typically the only issue that i've seen with Vista on a properly built PC... third parties. Which, admittedly, will always be a problem for Windows, due to the nature of the openness of the platform.
Apple's biggest strength is the closed nature of their hardware. MS has to support infinite combinations of hardware, third-party drivers, third-party software, accessories, etc. That's where most of its problems lie.
Vista itself is extremely stable. I've not had one bluescreening Vista PC in a year that wasn't caused by hardware. I've had a very very small number of hanged machines and/or boot loops, again, mostly due to hardware. Unfortunately, Apple has done a great job of making people believe THEIR Vista reality, not the one that exists.
Now, Vista certainly has some shortcomings... memory utilization is its big achilles heel, and they will be answering that with Windows 7, which at this point is basically an incremental major-minor upgrade a'la Apple. I'm not arguing, actually. I'd like to see major fixes not a more semi-annual to annual basis. I think that would go a long way to fixing some of their problems.
Our oldest edit suite is a 13-year-old Windows NT4 box running Avid. And the OS may look clunky and dated, but it seems pretty solid to me. Sure, it's not allowed on the Internet, but it does the job very well, so kudos to MS for NT4. but of course, I have to go say, quit fiddling with Vista and get on that NT4 machine and get to work!
I'm working on the Mac Pro. WinNT is for Co-op kids.
You should learn something about computers before putting that word in your handle.
That "exploit" was a year in the making and they held off on it for the contest.
Meanwhile, Vista and XP get owned by 12 year old kids every day. I would spend time explaining the difference between an exploit in a lab and in the wild, but you obviously don't have the background<