Marketing Matters

Archive for September, 2008

Just to keep harping on Microsoft for a moment, what’s really a shame with their last three major campaigns (Jerry Seinfeld, I’m a PC, and the Mojave Experiment) is that in trying to make their products and platforms interesting and engaging, they failed to engage their audience’s emotions. It’s all demonstration without audience empathy, they’re saying “this is funny, thou shalt enjoy” without eliciting the emotions naturally.  The stories aren’t well constructed.

And while they’ve been trying to confront Apple more and more directly, they’re not attacking them where they’re vulnerable. Apple will always get high marks for being interesting, but it will also always get equally poor marks for being an environmental hazard . One of Apple’s greatest strengths has always been its strong visual element, especially vivid colors. But Apple doesn’t seem to care for green very much. Sealed batteries in popular devices wear out in a few years causing a fully functional device to be tossed into the garbage heap. How much waste is Apple responsible for? And then let’s talk about battery chemicals seeping into the ground.

Meanwhile, the PC (and competitors’ phones, computers, portable music players, etc) have batteries and other parts that can be replaced easily and disassembling a PC to recycle its various parts is both a cinch and lucrative.

The only real reason that Microsoft wouldn’t steer its advertising in that direction would be that, as a company, it’s not exceptionally green itself. Correcting that, though, is a lot less expensive than high-profile ad campaigns that don’t accomplish anything. And it’s already a world better than Apple, according to environmental watchdogs such as ClimateCounts.

The “I’m a PC” ad used a world of faces. Make those faces do something good for the world they represent and people will care more.

It’s so hard not to talk about Microsoft’s new “I’m a PC” campaign, I’m not going to try to resist. It’s pretty obvious that the strategy is to put the “personal” back in personal computer, but they leave unanswered the question of what, if any, emotional tie those people have to their PC or that we viewers could have to them. That’s supposed to be the whole point of making a brand personal, right? Make people care about the brand and the product. They didn’t.

One could argue that it’s not necessary for us to feel anything about our PCs at this point. PCs are ubiquitous and utilitarian. They’re almost like water faucets or electrical outlets – I turn it on and it goes. And frankly, most PCs run Microsoft products most of the time. PCs running Microsoft products have become a basic household utility. When was the last time you felt one way or the other about your basic utilities (assuming they’re working)?

And that’s the reason we users get so upset about things like Vista when it crashes or has crappy functionality (a search function that can’t find anything???) or the like. That’s not how a utility is supposed to be. If my PC stops working when everything seems fine, I feel like I’m experiencing a rolling blackout in a third world country. My computer and the third world should not be comparable.

Which brings me to Orville Redenbacher. Mr. Redenbacher (or at least his agency) realized that popcorn was being widely consumed without much thought to the manufacturer or the respective quality. To make people think, briefly, about their choice, he got up in front of the camera and, like some quirky old uncle we all seem to have, talked to us about popping corn. He turned his product into a brand we cared about.

When I was growing up, it seemed like every third commercial was either Mr. Redenbacher talking about popcorn or Frank Purdue talking about chicken. So if Microsoft wants us to care about PCs and Microsoft products, why not use Bill Gates? How about if Bill Gates talked to the world about their PCs? If I saw twenty-five seconds of Vista-tweaking advice from Bill Gates and a five second tag, I’m not only going to watch that commercial, I’m going to care about it, go to the site to download the suite of them that will inevitably be released, talk about it and sing their praises for being smart. I bet a lot of other people would, too.