From Chick’s to Dick’s

That's quite a change.

Advertising and Nintendo Lovers

Enjoy.

Godin is Wrong, Microsofties are Extremely Gung-Ho.

Reading Seth Godin’s post today I couldn’t help but be struck by how misinformed he is.  I don’t know where he got his information but he’s written:

Question: When was  the last time you met an Apple employee who was truly passionate about the products she made or sold? My guess is this happened the last time you went to an Apple store. When was the last time you had a similar experience with a Microsoft employee?

Umm…well I live near Redmond, and I know a lot of MS employee’s.  I’d say their truly passionate about their products to a fault.   And that’s the crux of Microsoft’s Problem.

Microsoft is an amazing company for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is their ability to rally their troops. The company rents out stadiums to hold meetings.  And these meetings are incredible moral boosting events.

Microsoft is awesome at fostering talent.  I believe most people in the company are driven to excel.

But a major problem facing the company is that their employees are so gun-ho about the company and their products that they have difficulty empathizing with the outside world. 

Employees spend so much time at work,  invested in the company, it’s products, etc. that they cannot often see things from the perspective of the outside world, or at the very least, beyond the world of tech.  I’d liken it to a “group think” phenomenon.

If I’d had a say I’d mandate that employees spend more time away from work.  I’d make this especially true for the marketing department.

Say what you will, but you can’t accuse Microsoft Employees of not being passionate.  And you can’t point to passion as the issue.

Apple Responds to “I’m a PC”

 

About a year ago but hey it works.

Microsoft: ‘Meet PC.’

Microsoft’s latest ad campaign has received a lot of buzz thanks to a reported $300 million budget that included hiring Jerry Seinfeld for $10 million.

While the campaign itself has received a lot of buzz, the ads have been rather terrible. Positioning Gates and Seinfeld together was a really bad idea. Gates is best when he’s talking about his passions, or here.

Microsoft Thinks We’re Idiots
The second of the Gates Seinfeld ads was just ill conceived. The ad put Seinfeld and Gates together with ‘the people,’ Microsoft’s customers, in this case an idiot family.

Microsoft, if that’s how you see your customers then you’re clearly out of touch. The ad above is an insult.

Apple’s ad is turned against Apple.
The latest ad however is very good. They’ve co-opted Apple’s PC meme shifting Apple’s clunky and buggy PC image to a computer user.   This could effectively shut apple up. Co-opting the meme gave Microsoft a lot of options for presenting assumably real PC users as at least as cool and functional as the fictional ‘Mac’ character in Apple’s commercials.

Now, with this new advertisement the ‘PC’ caricature will no longer represent the clunky buggy computer metaphor, but it will now represent those ‘real’ people from the Apple ads.

With this change, the Apple ads are the ones that would come off as insulting. They can’t insult PC if PC is a user and no longer a box. This could effectively ‘shut Apple up in terms of it’s current ad campaign.

Apple could bring the meme back to being about a box, but that may be difficult if Microsoft is effective it’s going to be hard to put this cat back in the bag.

See Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” ad here:

 

Update:  I hadn’t seen this image before, but it shows clearly that Microsoft is trying to turn Apple’s PC the box, into PC, the computer user.