Microsoft is missing the point
By now, everybody knows about the Seinfeld commercials — how Microsoft paid Jerry $10 million to appear in a few commercials with Bill Gates, how they were mostly about nothing, and how after about two weeks, they were off the air.
If you’ve been watching TV recently, you’ve seen the next phase of this initiative, the “I’m a PC” ads, which feature lots of people doing lots of interesting things, all saying, “I’m a PC.”
When I see one of these, I shake my head. Not only because Microsoft is throwing $300 million at the problem — but because it doesn’t seem like they understand what the problem is.
The opening sequence of the “I’m a PC” ad tells me all I need to know. Sean, a Microsoft employee, appears in front of a white background dressed like John Hodgman, the PC in the Mac vs. PC ads, and says, “I’m a PC, and I’ve been made into a stereotype.” The cavalcade of people saying they’re a PC, and describing the interesting work they do in interesting places, follows.
But the Mac vs. PC ads never turned PC users into a stereotype — they turned Hodgman into a metaphor. This may sound like semantic hair-splitting, but it’s more than that.
The laid-back Justin Long is a metaphor for the un-stuffy ease and simplicity of the Mac experience: Macs can do it all right out of the box, shopping for a Mac is easy at an Apple Store, where you can also get help from an Apple genius, making backups on a Mac is simple with Time Machine, making a photo book in iPhoto is a snap, the magnetic power cord on a MacBook means your laptop won’t get yanked off the table just because someone trips on your power cord, Macs run Microsoft Office too, and you can even run Windows on a Mac if you want to.
The bumbling, overcompensating Hodgman is a metaphor for the frustration and complexity of the PC experience: PCs are susceptible to viruses that Macs don’t get, PCs give you a bunch of cryptic error messages when they crash (which is often), PCs get bogged down with spyware (that Macs don’t get), PCs come stuffed with trial software you don’t need that slows your computer down, you have to choose one of the six different versions of Vista that’s right for you (as opposed to the one simple version of Leopard that works for everybody), and many people have to update hardware to upgrade to Vista.
If the commercials were in fact trying to stereotype PCs, as Sean implies, you’d think there would be at least some overt suggestion that Macs are cool, or that PCs are nerdy, or that Macs are for cool people and PCs are for nerds. Yes, you can draw some inferences from the attire and mannerisms of Hodgman and Long. But there’s actually no stereotyping of Mac or PC users at all. The only stereotyping, if you could call it that, is the stereotype that Hodgman occasionally spouts about PCs being for work and Macs being for play. But there’s really nothing said about coolness; pretty much every spot is about functionality, and the concrete benefits you get by using a Mac over a PC.
But watching these “I’m a PC” commercials, it’s clear that that’s not how Microsoft took them. Though Mac attacks Microsoft on its merits — or lack thereof — Microsoft has taken the ads as an assault on their coolness. By showing off all the people who use PCs, Microsoft seems to be saying, “See, we’re cool too! Look at all these cool people who use PCs!”
And in doing so, they seem desperate and pathetic. You don’t catch cool by saying how cool you are. In fact, you don’t get to decide what’s cool. The people decide. If what you do rocks, you’ll earn your cool points. If what you do feels like bloated corporate garbage, not so much.
Of course, coolness isn’t really the point. The point is this: Microsoft doesn’t need a $300 million marketing campaign to prop up their street cred. They need to make better software.
Coming up in Part II: Some free advice for Microsoft
:: Posted by Eric Ratinoff ::
