Microsoft Does It Right… Almost

// April 6th, 2009 // Advertising

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about the Mac vs PC war and with good reason, nothing interesting has happened; until now.

Microsoft has finally decided to stop trying to look cooler than Mac and just show the straight facts; Macs are EXPENSIVE! Great timing, with the recession and all, as well.

So here’s how it pretty much went down:

David Webster, GM of brand marketing at MSFT has been working with Agency of Record - Crispin Porter & Bogusky to redeem themselves from the failure that was the “Seinfeld / Gates are actual people too” campaign, and they have come up with a great idea. Film reality based ads around people actually buying computers. Give them $1000 to buy whatever suits their needs and let them keep the difference. The idea behind the positioning is that Macs are simply value adds and in a recession that’s just unecessary. To quote Webster “Not everyone wants a machine that’s been washed with unicorn tears,”.

Well gee… Free computer? Keep the difference? Great! I’d buy a netbook!

Yes, I’d buy a netbook and I’m a Mac user because it’s a FREE COMPUTER!

Logistics and details aside, it’s a great idea, but once again the execution is all wrong for a number of reasons.

  1. There’s a good reason why Macs are expensive. They ARE washed with unicorn tears.
  2. Some random woman on the street who probably just needs to check her email and use Microsoft Word now and then is hardly an ambassador to the “Which computer do I need” debate.
  3. This random woman is not random at all. In fact, she’s a paid actress and people are already picking away at the apparent performance. Oops.
My two cents on the whole issue. I’m getting really sick and tired of the superiority debate on OS vs. OS. It’s like two people debating which cereal is better, Cocoa Puffs or Frosted Flakes. If MSFT wants to try to push down Mac by saying there’s no value in what you’re purchasing, all I have to say is that having worked at Microsoft for the odd project here and there, none of them have any inkling into why people buy Macs in the first place. Drink the Kool-Aid folks. It works wonders.
Ciao
For the ad dissection check these out:

One Response to “Microsoft Does It Right… Almost”

  1. Richard says:
    December 30, 2009 at 7:13 am

    You can’t buy a Mac for less than $1,000 and for very good reason - they’re superior to PC/Windows in quality and performance on just about every level. If someone gave me $1,000 and the same offer - I’d come up with the extra cash myself and buy the unibody, even though my 15-month-old MacBook Pro is still running just fine - able to boot itself AND a virtual install of Windows faster than any PC I’ve owned is able to have itself (plus all the 3rd-party bundled crap it needs to function “properly”) up and running. That brand new $750 Windows machine would be garbage in a year from now - at the very least it would be due for a rebuild.

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