Study says Seinfeld ads made MS brand image worse.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/business/media/04adco.html?_r=3&ref=technology

by timr • 17 years ago

26 19 17 years ago

unalone4• 17 years ago

No shit. It focused attention away from the brand, it was weird, and it raised a lot of criticism that attracted people who wouldn't have heard of the ad anyway.

I'm all for "edgy", and I love CP+B's work, but they were competing against Apple, and that means competing against possibly the best advertising machine on the planet. Apple has excellent reputation, they've got beautiful products, they were competing against a heavily-criticized product, and they had a brilliant two-pronged ad plan. Part of their ads only discussed product, and nothing else. No "Let's see people using this." No "Look at people using this in real life." It was, "We've made something beautiful." No more than that. It was the revolving iMac, the Macbook Air in the envelope, the rack of iPod touches, the chromatic Nanos, the many videos of the app store. Emphasis on "groundbreaking."

Meanwhile, they took out a heavy ad campaign against Microsoft. They made entertainment pieces. Slapstick. All of it gently teasing Microsoft. No hard edges: just two funny actors joking around. Even if it was unfair and imbalanced, even if Hodgman was the funnier of the two, it was fun, and it was fun like satire is fun. It didn't make the case that Microsoft was bad, it took that fact for granted.

Against this, CP+B put in an "edgy" ad. Weird stuff with Gates and Seinfeld joking. Only problem is, edgy is good when you've got two equal, generic products. CP+B's Burger King ads stand out because McDonald's has nothing. In this case, Microsoft is bland, but Apple is a hot product. It's one of the most fashionable brands on the planet, and even among hardcore tech geeks, it has a pretty good reputation. (Some people hate it, but some people love it.) Furthermore, it was a big risk, and Apple - seated in a comfortable niche - was able to launch attacks directed at the sole fact that it was a pricy and edgy campaign.

I'm interested in seeing how the "I'm a PC" ads end up doing. They're nice, even if they still have that feeling of Microsoft's avoiding talking about their product - and that, I think, is MS's Achilles Heel right now. They're a nothing brand. They're the biggest but they have no impressive positive reputation. Their computers are designed by other companies, none of which stand out. Apple, meanwhile, has an extremely tight product line and they control every aspect of their product, including ads.

Yeah, Microsoft is the bigger company, but they're at a disadvantage in this campaign. Apple has a definitive image. Microsoft does not.

smokey_the_bear• 17 years ago

What's CP+B?

auston• 17 years ago

Crispin Porter & Bogusky - http://www.cpbgroup.com/

madmanslitany• 17 years ago

Good commentary. Apple has kept Microsoft on defense with its PR for so long it's pretty hard to imagine Microsoft mounting a successful counterattack against them. Still, that begs the question, what COULD work for a Microsoft ad? The "I'm a PC" ads do have the weakness you mentioned of not saying a thing about Microsoft's actual products, but I think they've started to tap into Microsoft's biggest advantage by showing such a diverse range of people and professions; its ubiquity, its presence in just about every field related to computing.

There's a fine line that can't be crossed to avoid just making it creepy, but I'd like to see, say, Vista, Live Search, Windoes Live Messenger, an Xbox360, and a Zune all in the same ad tied together somehow and everything just working. Make people think "Microsoft = all computers" again the way they used to.

unalone4• 17 years ago

Apple fanboy as I am, I'd argue that they can't make good ads until they have a decently competitive product. It's possible to beat Apple; it's not possible to beat them at their own game. Microsoft is constantly playing feature catch-up, and they can't win; Apple has thoroughly dominated at the things they do, and anything Microsoft does to catch up will only be catch-up. They could design a minimalist theme and it's catch-up. They could slim down their applications and release a software suite and it's catch-up. So either they make a new desktop metaphor and begin developing an alternate system, or they pray that Apple makes a major mistake, which is risky, because Apple is pretty cautious.

Stuff like 360 and Live Search are hard to integrate together. They're so different! Microsoft would be hard-pressed to unify the two. And that's the problem. Apple has this obsessive integration: you get OS X on the iPhone, you have the same volume buttons on that and the computer, you get visual designs gradually blending through, the featuresets are all called the same things... it's all tight. Microsoft doesn't control that stuff. Apple has the rare ability to be uncompromising in design and get away with it.

With the features they have now, I think Microsoft's best idea is to strip down. Avoid fancy things, deal with the really important thing. We have these great games, we have this evolution-not-revolution interface, each time we make something it's a little bit better. They're the dominant player, so their best bet is playing it safe and trying to outlast Apple. It's still hard, but they've got an excellent team. If they try they can create something good.

lallysingh• 17 years ago

Really? You'd think they'd just attack on their old strengths & Apple's old weaknesses.

First, more hardware choice. There are a lot of hot PCs out there (netbooks, lots of what Sony puts out, panasonic toughbooks, UMPCs, tablets).

Second, software choice. Just start shooting off titles that have no (or no good) mac equivalent.

Of course, I'm a mac/unix guy, so I couldn't say I miss that stuff myself :-)

unalone4• 17 years ago

They've got a lot, but it's not theirs. The Toughbooks can advertise themselves, but that's not a Windows thing. They run Windows because it's the default. And it's easy to advertise freedom of choice, but only if your choices look as good as your competitor's lack of choice, and there's nothing as pretty as a Macbook that runs Windows by default.

vaksel• 17 years ago

why Seinfeld anyways? The guy is a has been. I can see them spending all that money when the show was in full swing...but now? Whats the point?

Agathos• 17 years ago

I guess the point was to remind us that Microsoft was important back in the nineties.

Zoasterboy• 17 years ago

Haha, I never thought of it that way, but now I see Microsoft just made a huge fool of themselves.

Zev• 17 years ago

The ad was shown just once, but people still talk about it.

FWIW, the ad was actually shown twice, the first time was a month before the super bowl at midnight somewhere in Idaho, specifically so it could be submitted to award ceremonies for the year.

TrevorJ• 17 years ago

The problem with the ad is the fact that it's ad odds with the rest of the brand, there's no unity. Coming from a different brand it could have worked, but it just came across like the school jock coming to class in goth.

antidaily• 17 years ago

Apparently, I'm the one person on the planet who actually enjoyed the ads. If they had focused on their products I probably would have turned the channel. Nike doesn't have to talk about how great their gear performs, they simply create a mood. Now, you could argue the Seinfeld ads were a little too Mars Blackmon-SpikeLee-jokey and not enough Witness-Lebron-Inspiring, but at least they didn't hit you over the head with Vista. And it allowed them to poke fun at themselves a bit - break down the big corporate slow-moving behemoth image.

cake• 17 years ago

Not the only one, I liked them too. I was very surprised to see and didn't liked them first. Afterwards I thought they were great because they were not focused on the product as you're saying.

Plus Bill Gates making fun of himself... you wouldn't see many CEOs doing that (even Steve Jobs!).

The article doesn't add much value to what we already know about those ads.

michael_dorfman• 17 years ago

Hear, hear.

Just to see Bill Gates reading from "Code Complete" to that kid was worth the whole thing....

danielrhodes• 17 years ago

That's because those ads were retar--- I mean ridiculous.

(sorry pg, there's only so much constructive criticism I can give before I call it like it is :-))

But seriously, the people who seek identity from their computers are younger audiences not older ones. That ad, by using a 90s era sitcom character, was aimed at people who are older. For the people who Microsoft needs to gain some momentum, it probably ended up making them look ridiculous. Microsoft is still in the game because of their market power and first-mover status back in the dawn of personal computers, but it will be very hard for them to dig themselves out of the hole they are in with money alone.

Study says Seinfeld ads made MS brand image worse.

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