Market Talk

I made it better!

I’ve been avoiding this post, because really, it’s low-hanging fruit. But I see this thing every day, and I just can’t take it anymore. I’ve got to get this off my chest.

Every morning I walk by this absolutely gigantic Microsoft for Windows 7 ad, tethered across two sides of a building on the corner of 42nd St. and 8th Ave. outside the bus station in midtown. They’ve actually changed it three times now, but they’re all part of the “I’m a PC, and Windows 7 was my idea” campaign.

The ads, and related commercials, are well produced, light-hearted, and I guess they make the company seem more “human.” But what they really do is substantiate every point their detractors have been throwing at them for years. What company does that?

Has there ever been a more jaw-droppingly tone-deaf ad campaign? I have no advertising experience, apart from having seen every episode of “Mad Men,” but, I mean, would Mercedes runs ads saying their customers retooled the engine of the new E-class? Of course they wouldn’t, they’d look like idiots.

In one ad, a girl in a coffeeshop says it was her idea to make the operating system less prone to, you know, ha ha, crash. In another, a woman sitting on porch says it was her idea to make the system less prone to, you know, smile widely, allow your personal information to get ripped off.

You mean, not one person who draws a paycheck from Microsoft noticed those little issues?

I don’t want Woody, Angela and Summer designing my computer’s operating system, for crying out loud. I want professionals, engineers, people who know what they are doing. An operating system that is notorious for problems is going to get better because some college kid in a coffeehouse redesigned it?

An even bigger problem is the ads take their cue (“I’m a PC”) from a competitor’s ad that do nothing but make fun of Microsoft and point out how lousy its products are. In the Apple ads, “I’m a PC,” means “I’m a bumbling idiot that can’t tie my shoelaces, much less produce reliable software.” And Microsoft’s new ads confirm that impression by bragging about a software system designed by people who know as much as Coldplay as coding.

They are letting their competitors define them. Somebody should be fired for this campaign.

Am I nuts? What’s the matter with this company? Are they so desperate to look somehow hip and with it that they’ll actually go so far as to make their competitors’ arguments for them? They have a stranglehold on the operating system, still, and they make scads of money. Apparently, they just don’t care to protect their image the way Apple or Mercedes or any other high-end company does.

But they should. They really should. Because some day they just may need to fall back on their public profile. And they can’t let Apple define it for them.
My Idea TV Commercial: Summer’s Secure PC