February 9, 2009 10:46 AM PST
Microsoft tugs at heartstrings with Windows ad
Microsoft's new Windows ad made its expected debut over the weekend, with a 4-year-old cutie named Kylie showing how easy it is to use Windows Live Photo Gallery to edit and share photos.
As I noted last week, Microsoft is pushing ahead with new spots in its Windows ad campaign after taking some time off following the Gates/Seinfeld and "I'm a PC" spots.
In the new spot, which debuted during the Grammy Awards Sunday (and is embedded below), Kylie shows how she uses the program to touch up her photo and then share it with her family via e-mail.
"I'm a PC and I am four and a half," she says to end the commercial.
After getting a lukewarm response with humor, is cute what Microsoft needs to sell Windows?
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
which, of course, won't help the people who buy this and find out that one click won't fix EVERYTHING.
These are exactly the type of ads that Apple has avoided since it's really, REALLY hard to see everything that happens to the picture in :30 worth of TV, the MS didn't do themselves any favors either... the before and after pic are probably on screen for less than a second in total, making the 'improvement' much harder to discern.
The girl's cute and everything, but I don't think this is the right approach MS should be taking, in light of Apple's very successful I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads
From that viewpoint, it was successful.
Actually, the only thing the ad showed at all is than a 4 and a half year old little girl is cute. Did anybody not know that already?
Did you see the commercial? All your points were covered in the ad. Go ahead and look at it again- the link is right here in the above article. It was quite clear that they made it easy to use, showing the girl using the app.
I suppose you could be right though- they didn't show her turning on the computer in the first place, so perhaps that is faked too and the computer is actually off. Hard to say when you look for fault in everything.
I watched the vid. It showed her click once. We don't know how easy it was to get the photo to move from the camera to the software, we don't know if the software comes up automatically when you plug in your camera, we don't know if you have to click import photos and we don't know how long it takes for those photos to move from your camera to the software. We also don't know how many cameras are supported by this software (very important thing to know before making the purchase).
Turning on the computer isn't exactly part of what we'd need to know since the commercial was meant to sell us on this one piece of software. When it comes to running an app, yes it's important. If they want to sell us on how easy it is, let us see the app for more than half a second when all the flashes from the screen are put together. I get it, she's 4 and a half, she moves a lot, but the camera moved more than she did.
All the points I made were far from covered in the ad. Try watching it again. If you still think I'm wrong, give me a specific time frame to watch to answer each question individually.
While I think the effectiveness of the ad in compelling sales is minimal, kudos to MS for trying a new approach. I think the goal behind this ad is help "brand" the company as easy-to-use. I think the ad does that. So, success IMO.
However, until MS comes up with new revolutionary ideas, they aren't going anywhere. Apple is going places because they've created a brand around "revolutionizing" things (ie - the iPhone revolutionized the cell phone).
MS has some catch-up to do.
@ Crashpad: Having patents issued is NOT innovation. Making USE of those patents to develop a tangible new idea and bring it to fruition is innovative. Many MS patents to date are fairly arguable anyway, with clear cases of prior art which could be used to challenge their validity.
Apple is not always the greatest innovator, but quite often has been. For references see: Apple II, MacOS GUI (and the later iPod GUI and iPhone GUI), MacPortable, Newton, Handwriting Recognition, Speech Recognition. I can't think of many true innovations from MS that weren't already in use in one form or another prior. Let's see - DOS, nope - there were already many in existence, GUI, no again, er... task bar? No, already existed on the Amiga in various forms. What else...? Oh, Word processor, or maybe spreadsheet app, perhaps page-layout app, or video editor, or media player/librarian - no, no, no and no. What MS are good at doing is introducing a 'new' technology, claiming it be their own idea and then implementing it almost ubiquitously to a massive number of people, but even in this respect Apple have gazumped them several times in the past decade (iPod, iTunes etc). Of the 2 companies, Apple is much more of an originator and MS is the imitator. In fact, like Apple's original acquisition of the Xerox R&D (and the team who built it) to develop into their first MacOS (paid for, not just copied I might add), many of MS greatest achievements have come from buying out third parties who had already done most of the hard work for them - and they had a reputation at one time for buying out small companies who might challenge their dominance in a given market and then shelving the technology, suppressing it forever... not very innovative.
(And I can process them faster in iPhoto.)
My 4 year old niece can use OS X quite easily - even down to remembering the nemonic keyboard shortcuts, which she finds a lot easier to deal with - everything based around a main modifier key such as Command rather than the mental gymnastics required to remember whether this shortcut use alt or ctrl and whether it's a nemonic or an obscure letter or function key. :)
And, perhaps needless to say, this is a heck of a lot better than their previous efforts.
(That's called damning with faint praise.)
ever since MS adopted the "I'm a PC" campaign, they have humanized the 70% of the world that uses MS and effectively knocking Apple back - at least a couple of steps (IMO)
the more people come to relate with it being OK to be a a PC, the more they will be put off by the 'humor' of Apple's nazi soup kitchen renditions. where somehow nothing is quite up to apple's standards.
I think Balmer is onto something here.
the winner will be decided by who blinks first. Will Apple drop their spots, or will MS?
somehow I think MS's deeper pockets will be worrisome.
Kudo's
The only folks worried right now are Microsoft's shareholders.
FYI, Apple has deeper pockets than Microsoft these days. True fact.
The the only thing Ballmer is "onto" these days is following Apple's wake. How about that new Microsoft My Phone service! LOL!
Deeper pockets... MS has a lot of money and assets and product movement, it's true, but I think Apple might actually have the deeper pockets when it comes to liquid cash. Of course, I might be mistaken, so I hope someone will post up the Microsoft numbers and let me know if I'm on wrong. So I don't have to look for them myself, of course.
Could be interesting to see what comes up.
Microsoft: $20.7B
Apple: $25B
As I wrote above, deeper pockets only help if your strategy is correct. Apple is gaining share; Microsoft is losing share. Apple's FY09 1Q results show that GAAP revenue is now more than 60% of Microsoft's ($10.17B vs. $16.6B). If you add in non-GAAP sales (due to iPhone subscription accounting), Apple's revenue goes up to $11.8B (70% of Microsoft's). Compare that to FY2000, when Apple's 1Q revenue was $2.34B, and Microsoft's $6.11B (40%).
So, based on the revenue trend, whose strategy looks better?
Microsoft investors will not be mollified by wishful thinking.
And I'm sure Apple had a video game system so we can compare the company offering on the same level too huh? Xbox cost Microsoft over 1B a year negative every year till last year.
"So, based on the revenue trend, whose strategy looks better?"
Microsoft looks much better. All companies understand diversity but Apple's not doing that. Just like Philip Morris understood it's business could take a hit anytime and bought Kraft so too does Microsoft branch out to pull in other markets. What's Apple doing? iTunes and Mac? What if one of those suddenly takes a huge hit? Remember the old saying, "It takes money to make money". If you horde your cash you're far less likely to make more.
You also forgot Apple's dominance in the creative industries (print/web design, publishing, music, video) - not all their own work (with big support by the likes of Adobe), but the OS is still a big draw for most of those workers.
Oh, and you also forgot their leverage in the music distribution business (and small inroads into other content delivery), plus their potentially dead-end (but we'll see) AppleTV idea for media/entertainment in the home. All of these things are centered around core technologies, but that interoperability is what makes it work so well and is why they're popular.
Apple also builds both hardware and software. MS depend on a lot of third parties developing most of their hardware with the exception of some mice/keyboards, their Zune player and their games console. Of course, by releasing a games console they're also undermining one of their own revenue streams - sales of Windows PC's as gaming machines, so it's a double-edged sword. They're perhaps lucky that Sony haven't played the PS3 card very successfully (too expensive, too few games, too slow to respond to consumer demands and economic situations) or they might not have seen the figures they now have in the console market, especially after the red ring of death debacle.
But to think Apple's not in the gaming market is just wrong. Apple DID take a stab at entering the console market back in the day (the Pippin), but it was way too early and the market was already quite saturated with more platforms than there are currently, but most of the top selling games are also released on the Mac these days, so their mainstay earner (the computer market) is actually BOOSTED by this fact - if they released a console it would just help to reduce Mac sales. There's still the possibility that the AppleTV will become more than it currently is - and perhaps it's current incarnation is merely a way to get it into living rooms for now (it is just a stripped down Mac Mini after all), with further add-ons and updates coming later (which could theoretically include gaming). If you look at the handheld gaming market, Apple are ALREADY gaining ground against their well-established competitors (Sony PSP, Nintendo DS) through the iPhone/iPod Touch, so I wouldn't count them out yet.
This happened to my uncle and his family - true story.
Hey, it's that girl's fault. If she wasn't going to questionable websites to begin with ...
:-D
There isn't a more common cliche on the internet then to read someone preceding a made up story with the phrases " I have a friend", "I have a relative", or "I know a guy"
Apple's commercials are much more memorable and familiar. I'm not even sure what the focus is in many of Microsoft's new commercials.
The I'm A PC campaign could go someplace if they just keep at it.
Windows IS a 4-year-old child! All of the four year olds I know are JUST LIKE WINDOWS...
Prone to:
- general instability
- never working when you need and doing a terrible job when you finally get them to work
- fits, tantrums, and illogical behavior
- insistence on doing a task THEIR WAY
- inability to understanding or comprehend simple instructions
- takes forever to get going on some mornings
- and takes forever to shut down at nights
This is the most honest ad Microsoft has ever made!
Windows 7 is
stable (even in Beta)
working 99% of the time for me, and works quite well
does things my way, Apple makes you do thing their way
takes like 15 seconds to boot on a slower machine, blazing fast on the gaming desktop
WinVista was a failure, Win7 kills OS X 10.5, but well have to wait for 10.6 to see if I am going to convert all the Hackintoshes back into Windows/Linux boxes or not
If Windows is the 4 year old, what age does that make a company that taunts another, spends more time pointing out faults with others than actually promoting their own products, and has an unshaven badly dressed slacker as their primary persona in the advertisements?
Seems to me that would make Apple the Terrible Two Year Old.
The Mac vs PC ads were clever and slick- years ago. They ahve long since become an embarassment for Apple.
And a Tivo with one BIG green plastic button
How many 4 year olds buy operating systems?
Do *you* want to have the same interface for your toy that you want for your child's?
Why not an OS interface for tots instead of just making it bigger and dumbing it down version after version.
The computer illiterate 30+ers can use the tots version
A smaller, more intelligent, possibly elegant Windows? probably never.
It's up to you.
You made the accusation. Now it's up to you to back up your claim.
If you would like, I can call them for you now and have them contact you via your CNET information. You're making accusations of exploitation, so they will be very interested in your evidence. What method of contact would you prefer? Would you like to contact them or shall I? I mean, this is a serious crime you have accused them of so it should be addressed immediately.
Oh wait, where am I again? ;-)
LOL.
It is interesting that M$ seems to want us to think of their OS as a four and a half year old girl though, isn't it?
Dalkorian: I don't see why MSFT wouldn't want to be seen as being associated with four year olds. Apple certainly associates itself with two year old tantrum throwing toddlers based on their ads. *shrug* Their choice, I suppose.
I think it's a better choice not to let people liek you make decisions for them.
The ad's cute, though, even if I don't think it'll be too effective.
- by Mark_Anderson February 10, 2009 1:15 PM PST
- I liked it. It's better than those horrible Mac vs PC ads because it shows what Windows can do rather than what Apple says Windows can't.
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- by tm_anon February 10, 2009 10:21 PM PST
- What can windows do according to that ad? All I'm seeing is the same old tools that have been around for pretty much the life of the digital camera.
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (61 Comments)Positive ahead of negative every time.
Any innovations with the Live services were barely there if there at all (I'm assuming the e-mail to her family happened in the program, otherwise it's not worth mentioning). There's really nothing to the commercial except to say "Hey! Look at this 4 and a half year old girl. Isn't she cute?"
If you're seeing anything else, are you sure you watched the same commercial I did?