Microsoft Marketing

Jim Crafton

There's an article[^] on Ars that mentions MS marketing which reminded me of something I've been curious about for about the last 6 months or so. Has anyone seen the various print ads for Office, where the office workers have some sort of dinosaur head on their shoulders. The tagline (or whatever it's called in ad speak) is something like "Microsoft Office has evolved. Have you?" I always thought it strange that you would seemingly insult your customers by: - calling them dinosaurs - asking if they've evolved (i.e. we're seemingly better than you are) Is it just me, or am I reading more into this than there really is? ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF!

code frog 0

It's just you. :laugh:

Sorry I couldn't resist. It doesn't bother me. Because I know better. Talking about evolution. When the Visual Studio 2005 Installer cannot even get it right I don't worry to much about Microsoft calling anybody names. Matter of fact the way their products have been performing lately we can now fire back. All in all Microsoft has good stuff but they are letting it slip a bit in their "FIRST TO MARKET" strategy.

So where was I... Oh yeah! It's just you.:cool:

Some assembly required. Code-frog System Architects, Inc.

realJSOP

You haven't watched enough "FireFly". :) ------- sig starts "I've heard some drivers saying, 'We're going too fast here...'. If you're not here to race, go the hell home - don't come here and grumble about going too fast. Why don't you tie a kerosene rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt "...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001

James Gupta

Yeah I saw some of them in London when we went a few months ago - office guys with dinosaur heads? The best advert i have seen for MS was in VSJ this month - it showed a programmer in an office, one said "Before Visual Studio 2005" and one said after, there were 10 differences ie in the before one his office is a mess - notes, coffee, no tasks completed, its night, complicated debugging books etc, and in the "after" one he had a wedding ring on, rock climbing books etc.

Jim Crafton

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's always one smartass in the crowd :) You may know better, and it doesn't bother me either. But does it work? DOes it annoy other people? If someone brought you a potential ad for your consulting firm that took that tone with your customers would you go with it? ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF!

Jim Crafton

Tell you what, when they give Jenna Jameson a starring role, maybe I'll get interested... :) ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF!

Jim Crafton

LOL! :) So does that imply he just gave up, quit programming, went out and got married and began rock climbing? :) It kind of makes you wonder who designs the ads, and how they get approved. ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF!

Chris Losinger

Jim Crafton wrote:

I always thought it strange that you would seemingly insult your customers by: - calling them dinosaurs - asking if they've evolved (i.e. we're seemingly better than you are)

the pedant in me wants to write a big long post about how evolution isn't directed towards "better" (or even towards 'more advanced'), only towards somewhat-less-prone-to-early-death. Cleek | Image Toolkits | Thumbnail maker

code frog 0

It depends that type of campaign is going to work great with many and not with some. There's more to it though. Computers and software are expensive. If you have anything 3 years old or older you have a dinosaur. Microsoft is getting at your software and equipment keeping your business from growing because you are not leveraging some powerful concepts and tools. They are right. When you see that add you know they are right. You also know that Microsoft is probably the only choice you really have in many applications. So instead you just laugh go back to the office and start working again. When budget projections come around you request $80,000 for upgrades. If you get it you are the hip cat and current. If not you are the dinosaur.

So I guess in many ways that campaign isn't speaking to the tool user but the decision maker. You cannot influence the decision maker without it coming through the tool user so I think I'd stick with appealing to the developers and the administrative types as my target.

Anyway, long story short. I don't advertise. My services are word of mouth only and the growth has been pretty good. Would advertising help? I don't know. I'm not ready to grow at a fast rate so I've not bothered to think about it. Guess in that respect I'm the dinosaur. :)

Ultimately though it's just Microsoft. You'll buy from them when you have the money to do it and when you don't have the money you'll wish you could buy from them. So does any of it really matter? Microsoft is like the ferrari you either like it or not and advertising won't really matter.

Some assembly required. Code-frog System Architects, Inc.

Chris Meech

Jim Crafton wrote:

"Microsoft Office has evolved. Have you?"

What?? They are leaving out 'Intelligent Design'? That should generate lots of product interest. :-D :-D :-D Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] When I want privacy, I'll close the bathroom door. [Stan Shannon] Nice sig! [Tim Deveaux on Matt Newman's sig with a quote from me]

Marc Clifton

Jim Crafton wrote:

where the office workers have some sort of dinosaur head on their shoulders.

That's pretty insulting, and pretty stupid. First off, it's insulting to the customers. Second, it's insulting to Microsoft, because it implies that Microsoft's products are so archaic that, no, not even a cave man or neandertal head is appropriate--we need dinosaurs. Makes me want to use a MAC. It's also insulting to science, as man did not evolve from dinosaurs, but something that was left over after the dinosaurs went extinct. And finally (and this deserves a separate notation all together), it's insulting to the ID people, because of course, man didn't evolve (yeah, yeah, poetic license. Go with the flow). Man just is. But is the ID man intellegent enough to not use Microsoft products? Ah, there's the question! Marc Pensieve

Andy Brummer

I think they are trying to make users feel bad about using "old" versions of Office. The useful bits of Office haven't changed since office 97 came out, so plenty of users just don't feel the need to upgrade. Since they don't have any real new features that you can explain in a simple ad, they have fall back on ooh shiny, or evolved or whatever.

Paul Watson

Jim Crafton wrote:

Tell you what, when they give Jenna Jameson a starring role, maybe I'll get interested

Watch Battlestar Galactica. regards, Paul Watson Ireland Colib and ilikecameras. K(arl) wrote: oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!

Paul Watson

Chris Losinger wrote:

only towards somewhat-less-prone-to-early-death.

With bountiful reproduction. No good being 100 years old and sterile all your life. regards, Paul Watson Ireland Colib and ilikecameras. K(arl) wrote: oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!

Chris Losinger

right. i guess i hoped 'early' would imply 'too early to reproduce much'. so sloppy. :) Cleek | Image Toolkits | Thumbnail maker

Jim Crafton

code-frog wrote:

If you have anything 3 years old or older you have a dinosaur.

I personally disagree with this. You buy the software you need to do a job. It's a tool. If it continues to work for you, and help you do you job, how, after a mere 3 years, does that make you a dinosaur (or the software a dinosaur)? I have Office 2000. I have seen absolutely NO reason to upgrade it. Ditto for Windows 2000. They both work great, and nothing in the current Office (or Windows) version appeal to me enough to buy them. So I guess I'm a dino too. :) And I suspect that's the same for a whole lot of other people as well. The software industry wants to sell people on this obsessive to need to upgrade stuff every year that I think is just totally un-realistic. ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF!

David Crow

I saw that before/after ad. It was good. I thought the photos (i.e., angry wife vs. wife + kid) were a good touch.

"The words of God are not like the oak leaf which dies and falls to the earth, but like the pine tree which stays green forever." - Native American Proverb

Jim Crafton

Ahh, the female Ceylon-android-watchamacallit babe. Yeah, she's not too shabby! ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF!

David Crow

Jim Crafton wrote:

Is it just me, or am I reading more into this than there really is?

I don't find the ad insulting at all. It doesn't require any brain power to process the ad or its intent. We all know what a dinosaur is and know that it equates to something old. Life is too short to be wasting time reading something into an ad that may (or may not) be there in the first place.

"The words of God are not like the oak leaf which dies and falls to the earth, but like the pine tree which stays green forever." - Native American Proverb

Jim Crafton

Well I guess what I was wondering at, was to put myself in the place of the person who might approve these ads. And that person's job (I suspect, I don't actually know) would be to think of stuff like this. After all, isn't the point of the ad to convey a particular message as clearly as possible, in a way that's most guaranteed to get the customer to purchase whatever the ad is selling? And that's why I thought the ad's were less than effective. ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF!