New Microsoft commercial, featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


Do you know anything about human psychology at all? People despise smug people telling them that they are idiots for not buying their good. They respond favorably to the calm, cool guy doing so.

And I'd imagine that the guy wearing the suit probably buys more high end stuff than the guy wearing the t-shirt and jeans.

Do you have a source?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Do you have a source for your BS that the Mac guy's smugness attracts consumers?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Do you have a source for your BS that the Mac guy's smugness attracts consumers?

First, I don't think he's smug. He's presented as an easy going dude.

Second, it's something everyone learns in Marketing 101.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Kidicious


First, I don't think he's smug. He's presented as an easy going dude.

Second, it's something everyone learns in Marketing 101.

http://www.cultureby.com/trilogy/2006/08/the_problem_of_.html

The problem of smugness

Apple_pc The world of branding moves fast. No sooner have we made one mistake, we rush off to make another. That's the nature of the beast. We don't ever go back to wonder how things might have been done differently. There is always a new mistake to make and we want to be the ones to make it.

Take the Apple campaign, the one that features two men, one Apple, one PC. This is a very odd piece of marketing. It warms the heart of every Apple owner. But, really, did they need encouragement? If ever there were a group of people who qualified as consumer devotees, Apple buyers are it.

So, if the ads are not directed at Apple owners, then who? Surely not non-Apple owners. The ad makes fun of non-Apple owners. It declares them clueless morons, incapable of creativity, obsessed with work, men in grey flannel suits. What are chances that making fun of this group is going to recruit them? Surely, Apple has done the opposite of what they intend.

Apple has a problem. They live in a dichotomous universe. There is a small group of loyalists. And a much larger group of those who don't really care. But they weren't content with that. Thanks to the advice of TBWA\Chiat\Day, I guess, they found a way to turn their non loyalists into anti-loyalists.

Um, good work, fellas. Self congratulation is a dangerous thing...and really bad marketing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/feb/05/comment.media

I hate Macs

Unless you have been walking around with your eyes closed, and your head encased in a block of concrete, with a blindfold tied round it, in the dark - unless you have been doing that, you surely can't have failed to notice the current Apple Macintosh campaign starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, which has taken over magazines, newspapers and the internet in a series of brutal coordinated attacks aimed at causing massive loss of resistance. While I don't have anything against shameless promotion per se (after all, within these very brackets I'm promoting my own BBC4 show, which starts tonight at 10pm), there is something infuriating about this particular blitz. In the ads, Webb plays a Mac while Mitchell adopts the mantle of a PC. We know this because they say so right at the start of the ad.

"Hello, I'm a Mac," says Webb.

"And I'm a PC," adds Mitchell.

They then perform a small comic vignette aimed at highlighting the differences between the two computers. So in one, the PC has a "nasty virus" that makes him sneeze like a plague victim; in another, he keeps freezing up and having to reboot. This is a subtle way of saying PCs are unreliable. Mitchell, incidentally, is wearing a nerdy, conservative suit throughout, while Webb is dressed in laid-back contemporary casual wear. This is a subtle way of saying Macs are cool.

The ads are adapted from a near-identical American campaign - the only difference is the use of Mitchell and Webb. They are a logical choice in one sense (everyone likes them), but a curious choice in another, since they are best known for the television series Peep Show - probably the best sitcom of the past five years - in which Mitchell plays a repressed, neurotic underdog, and Webb plays a selfish, self-regarding poseur. So when you see the ads, you think, "PCs are a bit rubbish yet ultimately lovable, whereas Macs are just smug, preening tossers." In other words, it is a devastatingly accurate campaign.

I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis (Doctor Who, incidentally, would definitely use a PC). PCs have charm; Macs ooze pretension. When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, "I hate Macs", and then I think, "Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?" Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb. If the ads were really honest, Webb would be standing there with one arm, struggling to open a packet of peanuts while Mitchell effortlessly tore his apart with both hands. But then, if the ads were really honest, Webb would be dressed in unbelievably po-faced avant-garde clothing with a gigantic glowing apple on his back. And instead of conducting a proper conversation, he would be repeatedly congratulating himself for looking so cool, and banging on about how he was going to use his new laptop to write a novel, without ever getting round to doing it, like a mediocre idiot.

Cue 10 years of nasal bleating from Mac-likers who profess to like Macs not because they are fashionable, but because "they are just better". Mac owners often sneer that kind of defence back at you when you mock their silly, posturing contraptions, because in doing so, you have inadvertently put your finger on the dark fear haunting their feeble, quivering soul - that in some sense, they are a superficial semi-person assembled from packaging; an infinitely sad, second-rate replicant who doesn't really know what they are doing here, but feels vaguely significant and creative each time they gaze at their sleek designer machine. And the more deftly constructed and wittily argued their defence, the more terrified and wounded they secretly are.

Aside from crowing about sartorial differences, the adverts also make a big deal about PCs being associated with "work stuff" (Boo! Offices! Boo!), as opposed to Macs, which are apparently better at "fun stuff". How insecure is that? And how inaccurate? Better at "fun stuff", my arse. The only way to have fun with a Mac is to poke its insufferable owner in the eye. For proof, stroll into any decent games shop and cast your eye over the exhaustive range of cutting-edge computer games available exclusively for the PC, then compare that with the sort of rubbish you get on the Mac. Myst, the most pompous and boring videogame of all time, a plodding, dismal "adventure" in which you wandered around solving tedious puzzles in a rubbish magic kingdom apparently modelled on pretentious album covers, originated on the Mac in 1993. That same year, the first shoot-'em-up game, Doom, was released on the PC. This tells you all you will ever need to know about the Mac's relationship with "fun".

Ultimately the campaign's biggest flaw is that it perpetuates the notion that consumers somehow "define themselves" with the technology they choose. If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality. Of course, that hasn't stopped me slagging off Mac owners, with a series of sweeping generalisations, for the past 900 words, but that is what the ads do to PCs. Besides, that's what we PC owners are like - unreliable, idiosyncratic and gleefully unfair. And if you'll excuse me now, I feel an unexpected crash coming.

There's ****loads of similar articles online. Obviously all of these people are not edge cases...

[Wiglaf]

Originally posted by Asher

- I don't think highly of lawyers.
- What kind of doctor has a liberal arts degree?
- Liberal arts degrees aren't a prerequisite for being an executive

Plenty of people are pre-med in college while majoring in the liberal arts. I've seen English majors go to med school.

Just face facts: you are upset because there are people with liberal arts degrees who do not sit in front of a machine all day doing the gruntwork you do. OH HELLO BILL CLINTON, YOUR GAY SEX MAN IDOL GOT A DEGREE IN POLITICS! MEOW MEOW! SO DID BARACK OBAMA! AND PALIN IN JOURNALISM! LOOKS LIKE NOT TOO MANY COMP SCI MAJORS RULING THE WORLD! NO THEY ARE RULING THE SPACE BETWEEN THEIR LAZY WHITE ASSES AND THEIR DUAL MONITORS AND HULKING WORKSTATIONS WITH LIKE TWO XEONS AND ****!!!1111

Perhaps I am Jack McCoy and you are the female witness who doesn't know how to stop lying until she faints and dies before Jerry Orbach mutters a dry one liner like "Guess she really took the fall after all" and the screen fades to black and says DIRECTED BY DICK WOLF and the theme song plays.

DUN DUN DUN DUNNNDUNNNDUN DUAA!

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Do you have a source for your BS that the Mac guy's smugness attracts consumers?

Just a quick web search revealed this.

Social Norms also have tremendous impact on the behavior of consumers in the marketplace. All behavior is driven by some motivating force and the motivating force that drives purchasing behavior is social acceptance. In other words, consumers are often influenced in their purchasing decisions by whether or not they believe that a particular purchase will or will not lead to social acceptance.

Social Influence & Reference Groups

[Asher]

Originally posted by Wiglaf


Plenty of people are pre-med in college while majoring in the liberal arts. I've seen English majors go to med school.

Dr Nick?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Kidicious


Just a quick web search revealed this.



Social Influence & Reference Groups

Did you even ****ing read it?

The excerpt you quoted about Social Norms can actually more accurately apply to why PCs are popular (it's the norm). It doesn't say smugness attracts customers..

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Asher
There's ****loads of similar articles online. Obviously all of these people are not edge cases...

I noticed that the 2 you posted don't seem to be experts in Marketing or even business. Do you have any sources from someone who might know what they are talking about?

[Imran Siddiqui]

^ What Asher said.

Smugness is the anti-thesis of social norms. No one likes smug people. Social acceptance is far more of a casual laid back type of individual.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Kidicious


I noticed that the 2 you posted don't seem to be experts in Marketing or even business.

They are the people who the marketing is aimed at. It clearly didn't work on them.

Failure. FAILURE. Simple.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Asher


Did you even ****ing read it?

The excerpt you quoted about Social Norms can actually more accurately apply to why PCs are popular (it's the norm). It doesn't say smugness attracts customers..

That's ridiculous or MS would run commercials based on a strategy that would claim to get social acceptance to it's customers. There's no basis to what you're saying. People don't buy PCs for status. They buy them because their cheaper.

[Wiglaf]

They are the people who the marketing is aimed at. It clearly didn't work on them.

Failure. FAILURE. Simple.

Someone who thinks liberal arts majors can't get jobs can't call anyone else a failure.

Why do you think macs are exploding on college campuses? Because 18-22 year olds especially care about social acceptance. Macbooks and iPods are cool, Acer/HP notebooks, Vista, and Sandisk Sansas just aren't. This is still true in other demographics, especially the ones apple targets (e.g. not offices that need to focus on software compatibility).

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Asher

They are the people who the marketing is aimed at. It clearly didn't work on them.

Failure. FAILURE. Simple.

What are you talking about? What kind of people are they? Are they the kind of people who like to spend a lot of money on a computer and get higher quality. Are they the kind of people who like to fit in with other people who buy Apple? No way. You are way off. They are probably people who wear grey suits.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Kidicious
That's ridiculous or MS would run commercials based on a strategy that would claim to get social acceptance to it's customers. There's no basis to what you're saying. People don't buy PCs for status. They buy them because their cheaper.

And if people buy Macs for status, it is utterly ridiculous to have a smug "I'm a Mac" guy who looks like a poor college student as the face of the device.