that's the "wisdom of crowds" for you. or is that ignorance? i can never quite be sure.
Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
· 1 year ago
Well, to go by Surowieki's guidelines, the crowd (in this case) was too homogeneous. Everyone who panned the ads did so from an Apple laptop.
modemlooper
· 1 year ago
it wouldnt have mattered if it was MS or not the ads just stunk..was not funny in the slightest.
Vygantas
· 1 year ago
It's easy for you to say than $ isn't yours.
Mirco
· 1 year ago
Yeah, thank's.. blogosphere! I really loved the concept, and the humour.
d3bruts1d
· 1 year ago
Oh, come on Mark. This had nothing to do with Apple fanboys. The ads were just bad, I've yet to find anyone that actually understood the ads. They carried no message, mentioned no product, and were hard to understand unless you read the blogs/news and knew why Microsoft was running these ads.
It might have been better if they added a "to be continued...." to the end of each ad, that way viewers would have at least understood that the ads will be getting to some kind of point down the road. It didn't help things here where the 2nd ad (you know, the 4+ minute one) was split up into two 60-90 second clips.
I watched the ads over and over again trying to figure out who they were trying to target. Were these aimed at Mac/Linux users, trying to get them to "switch"? Were these aimed at Windows XP users trying to get them to upgrade? Was this even related to Vista at all? If the technical people didn't "get" the ads, how are the non-technical people suppose to "get" them?
Perhaps I would have liked the ads better if it didn't have Seinfeld in them. I've never found him funny, didn't like the show, and cannot find a person that I know that liked him.
This really had nothing to do with disliking Microsoft or Windows Vista... I enjoy XP... I just think these are some of the worst ads in history. Right next to the Burger King ads.
Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
· 1 year ago
It's interesting you say that, since both ads from BK and these MS ads were done by the same company.
Microsoft is one of the few companies to be in the position to put out an ad and not need a clear call to action. Look at the GE advertisements for their GreenTech. You know, the ones that have that little CGI frog jumping from the airplane to the nuclear power plant and all that - Are they trying to sell airplane engines? Nuke plants?
No, it's called branding. MS took this one step further and said "why can't we just put out an ad that's entertaining?"
d3bruts1d
· 1 year ago
Ahh, but there is a couple of big differences between the GE and Microsoft ads.
1) The GE ads were actually entertaining and fun to watch. The Microsoft ads were not entertaining and were not fun to watch.... if fact, it was like a really bad wreck. I didn't want to look, but couldn't turn away. After looking the 2nd time, I felt dirty and ashamed.
2) The GE ads also made since. It provided a clear and easy to follow message. The Microsoft ads failed to do that. The 1st ad from Microsoft came across as more of an advertisement for a fake shoe store than an ad for a software company, operating system, or anything PC related.
The only thing the Microsoft ads accomplished were leaving people confused. Thus creating a massive negative buzz about the ads. Again, it has nothing to do with Apple fanboyism (despite your obvious Microsoft fanboyism). For most people, the ads sucked and were not funny. I'm sorry.
Shane
· 1 year ago
OK, that's the last straw. First, the word Mash is utterly offensive and ridiculous and absurd and everyone should stop using it. Second, if you liked those ads, your judgment is seriously in question. This site is, like, fully off my, like, RSS feeds now, dude. Fully.
Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
· 1 year ago
Sorry dude. Like totally sorry. Fully man. Fully.
Web News
· 1 year ago
Agreed with d3bruts1d
Gwenny
· 1 year ago
I'm a middle aged woman who has used only PCs since she upgraded from Commodore 64 in the early 90s. I don't like Apple or Apple Products. And I hated the commercials. Just to let you know.
Rian
· 1 year ago
I didn't realize my taste in humor was so poor... I thought the commercials were really funny. After vista, i'm not really pro MS... but I'm sad to see the commercials pulled.
On the other hand, the day those tasteless, annoying apple commercials get tossed will be a happy one for me. I feel like I'm living in bizzaro world.
Ian
· 1 year ago
I agree Mark. The message was confusing but i thought the ads were funny, and so did everyone I sent them too.
I don't think that the blogosphere are "Apple fanboys", it's just that it's always popular to hate large companies, especially Microsoft.
Matthew Fiorentino
· 1 year ago
We here at Visible Measures just finished up a head-to-head viral video analysis of the Microsoft campaign, pitting the Seinfeld / Gates duo against the "I'm a PC" World. We found that, despite the criticism on the Seinfeld front (that's a shame), it's out-performing the feel-good response to Apple's "Get a Mac" campaign... by more than 4 million viral video views! Sure, the Seinfeld / Gates clips came out first, but in normalizing the data we discovered that the "I'm a PC" clips generated barely half the views of the Seinfeld / Gates videos in the same amount of days. Wow! Perhaps Microsoft will bring Seinfeld back? Who knows. Come by our site and check out our blog to learn more about the campaign's performance!
All Comments
It might have been better if they added a "to be continued...." to the end of each ad, that way viewers would have at least understood that the ads will be getting to some kind of point down the road. It didn't help things here where the 2nd ad (you know, the 4+ minute one) was split up into two 60-90 second clips.
I watched the ads over and over again trying to figure out who they were trying to target. Were these aimed at Mac/Linux users, trying to get them to "switch"? Were these aimed at Windows XP users trying to get them to upgrade? Was this even related to Vista at all? If the technical people didn't "get" the ads, how are the non-technical people suppose to "get" them?
Perhaps I would have liked the ads better if it didn't have Seinfeld in them. I've never found him funny, didn't like the show, and cannot find a person that I know that liked him.
This really had nothing to do with disliking Microsoft or Windows Vista... I enjoy XP... I just think these are some of the worst ads in history. Right next to the Burger King ads.
Microsoft is one of the few companies to be in the position to put out an ad and not need a clear call to action. Look at the GE advertisements for their GreenTech. You know, the ones that have that little CGI frog jumping from the airplane to the nuclear power plant and all that - Are they trying to sell airplane engines? Nuke plants?
No, it's called branding. MS took this one step further and said "why can't we just put out an ad that's entertaining?"
1) The GE ads were actually entertaining and fun to watch. The Microsoft ads were not entertaining and were not fun to watch.... if fact, it was like a really bad wreck. I didn't want to look, but couldn't turn away. After looking the 2nd time, I felt dirty and ashamed.
2) The GE ads also made since. It provided a clear and easy to follow message. The Microsoft ads failed to do that. The 1st ad from Microsoft came across as more of an advertisement for a fake shoe store than an ad for a software company, operating system, or anything PC related.
The only thing the Microsoft ads accomplished were leaving people confused. Thus creating a massive negative buzz about the ads. Again, it has nothing to do with Apple fanboyism (despite your obvious Microsoft fanboyism). For most people, the ads sucked and were not funny. I'm sorry.
On the other hand, the day those tasteless, annoying apple commercials get tossed will be a happy one for me. I feel like I'm living in bizzaro world.
I don't think that the blogosphere are "Apple fanboys", it's just that it's always popular to hate large companies, especially Microsoft.
http://www.visiblemeasures.com/news-and-events/...
-Matt