The Microsoft Ad Folly
September 19, 2008 – 4:07 pm
I have a confession to make I hate Microsoft. They are the epitome of everything wrong with the tech industry. They ignore standards, illegally bullied their way to dominance, and they are so incredibly out of touch with their customer base that they try to force you to buy their product.
But lately I am starting to feel sorry for them. In a well publicized move Microsoft is trying to counter the very effective Apple ads by releasing their own I’m a PC ads. The campaign began with the now canceled Jerry Seinfeld ads and have progressed to attacking the Apple ads.
The whole scenario reminds me of my teenage years. I can recall more than a couple kids growing up who were in the least socially awkward and more often than not were outcasts. These kids had not yet figured out who they were and instead watched the “cool” kids and imitated them as best they could. When the cool kids wore a certain brand of clothes they went out and bought them too. When the cool kids talked about a certain type of music they would go buy the CDs even if they did not like the music.
It was obvious to everyone what was going on. As hard as they tried they were just a little off and it showed. Why, because they were trying to be someone else rather than themselves. Enter Microsoft. Apple released the wildly popular iPod and Microsoft follows years later with the Zune. Firefox creates tabbed browsing and years later Microsoft updates IE 7 to include tabs. Even the PC is in this category. The first Windows PC was not released for 15 years after the Apple II.
The point of the new ads is try to paint Apple as an elitist and Microsoft as the common person. Truthfully Apple is walking into this but the whole campaign is waste of time. All the clever marketing in the world is not going to fix the fact that no one wants your product. As I have mentioned before I work as IT consultant. I have literally hundreds of clients. You know who many of them have said they want Vista? Zero, zip, zilch - none Dozens of them have said they would like a new computer but they don’t want Vista. And yet dozens more of them have said their next computer will be a Mac.
It all brings me back to feeling bad for Windows. They are the nerdy kid in the movie that we hope will get the girl but never does. They are the social outcast trying to act cool. If only they had spent the reported $300 advertising budget on actually fixing Vista. As the saying goes, you can put lipstick on a pig but it’s still a pig.
