Hi Adam,
2008/12/2 Dr Adam Trickett <adam.trickett@???>:
> Has anyone been annoyed by the silly Microsoft advert where clueless people
> claim that they are a PC?
>
Nope. Get a decent PVR with an advert skip button and you'll never
have to see it again :)
I very rarely see adverts these days, especially not enough to get
annoyed by them. Most things on commercial telly that I want to watch
I record and then start watching late from the PVR (say 15 mins late
for a 1 hour programme) and skip the ads. I end up finishing watching
it at about the time it ends anyway, and gain 15 mins of my life at
the start of the programme. Of course I tend to fritter those 15 mins
away typing emails to LUGs, but that's my choice :)
I have seen the advert in question however, and I don't see what all
the fuss is about. Microsoft have so massively missed the point with
those adverts, which are clearly a response to the highly successful
(if overdone) Apple "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" advertisments. In the Apple
ads the actors portray the persona of the computers themselves, not
the users. They clearly seek to show the PC as stuffy, boring,
business like, and incapable of anything fun, whereas the Mac is
young, trendy, flexible, agile and so on.
The Microsoft adverts seem to have missed the point by making out that
the "PC Guy" is a stereotype of the _people_ who use the hardware, not
the hardware itself. Whilst it's true to say that there is an element
of stereotyping the user in the Mac ads, Microsoft seem to be
labouring that point far too much, when what they should be doing is
playing their strengths.
Of course since recent figures have come out showing for the first
time that Windows is below 90% of the market, Mac is up to 8.87% (from
8.21% last month), and Linux usage up from 0.71% to 0.83%, Microsoft
probably need to do _something_, I'm just not convinced their
marketing is right - not for us anyway.
In response I don't believe we _should_ do anything such as start
memes, create parodies or copy-cat campaigns at all. The Mac ad was
successful because it was (initially at least) original. The Microsoft
ones are far from that, and for the Linux enthusiast to take it
further is flogging a dead horse IMO.
We should be looking at ways of promoting what we have, our advantages
over the competition, our strengths, not kick off knee-jerk copy-cat
reactionary marketing. The public see through that very quickly. Take
the appalling Novel "I'm Linux" adverts as a prime example of how
_not_ to do it.
I appear to be rambling now, so I'll stop :)
Just my 2p :)
Cheers,
Al.
