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Microsoft may Sanction the 'Switcher' PR-Rep
Nerull sent in a snippit from The Age saying "Microsoft may consider sanctions against a public relations consultant who tried to pass herself off as someone who had switched from the Apple Mac to Windows XP in a high-profile US advertising campaign, chief executive Steve Ballmer said today." Here is Monday's
Slashdot Story that this follows up to. Lots of amusing little quotes about
what it means to be trustworthy.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=5838
Well, the one with the "seventh grade" kid has been pulled too.
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Not to be argumentative, but the use of stock photos does not, in and of itself, mean the whole ad is a sham- although this ad clearly was a sham.
At my first job, with a company of 7 people, we assumed that when the ad agency did our web site they would be taking pictures of us- especially because the founders considered themselves quite good-looking. But the ad agency used stock photos- they said they ALWAYS used stock photos, and seemed surprised that we thought we'd be photographed. They may have used the stock photo because the day they decided to do it, the PR rep had spilled coffee on herself, or for any number of other minor reasons. It's SOP for an ad company.
I just think the issue of stock photos is really tangential and unrelated to the larger issue- that the *ad itself* was false, or at best misleading.
Eagles may fly, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
castigate Pronunciation: (kst-gt)
tr.v. castigated, castigating, castigates
To inflict severe punishment on.
To criticize severely.
quite is a proper geek saying actually, meaning "nearly a quote" or a semi-quote.
no, this action does not 'beg the question,' it 'raises the question.' begging the question is a logical fallicy of assuming what you're claiming to prove (e.g. this music sucks because it is bad).
Right, because everyone knows that people in advertising are the soul of discretion and honesty. Wait, what the fuck?
Microsoft doesn't pay random low-level people to lie. They hire whole ad agencies to do campaigns for them. So, maybe it was someone from Microsoft who came up with the idea for a "reverse switched" campaign (nevermind the absurdity of the concept - how many Mac users convert to die-hard Windows freaks?). What probably happened was that MS said, "great, get some testimonials and make it happen!" and the poor shmuck stuck with the job sat there for a little while until she realized that there weren't any such testimonials to be had. So she made one up.
Microsoft has done plenty of ad campaigns in the past, but their deceptions have all been about matters of substance - stuff like "the GPL will take over your software." Lying about something like this isn't just dumb - it may actually be too far beneath their notice to be worth pinning on them.
Hahahaha! Read here and here. I love the part where it says "all these dirty old men confessing about lusting over this 14-year old girl." Hahaha priceless.
Actually mac hard drives from the late nineties were famous for the inconsistency where I worked. We used to joke about seeing the Mac with the ? and giving the machine a good swiff kick to get the things rolling again. I tell you I am full of Mac storied that could make up a whole campaign for Microsoft. They would be just as fair as the Apple ones since they would compare Windows 2000 with OS 7 and 8. "I use to have to restart my Mac every day. And I wish we had blue screens instead of just having the mysterious lockups. And that Ctrl-Apple-Esc Force Quit thing? It never worked. There were times when I actually had to pull the plug from the wall to shutdown the machine. And don't get me started about the PowerBook 3500 that I had to return to be repaired the day after getting it. Then we switched to Windows NT and eventually 2000. The machines were faster, more stable, and everything just worked. We were able to trust our servers again because they weren't crashing every other day like our Mac 'servers' were. I am John Doe and I work in a department of 200 Windows lovers (and Mac haters)."
Although not referring specifically to the Mallinson case, he added it may be necessary to "weed out" employees who did not live up to Microsoft's code of behaviour.
sounds to me like she should be promoted under this standard! Is the MS code of behavior NOT to misinform, spread FUD, and do it all costs...business ethics and truth be damned? Or is it a new policy that will see Ballmer and Gates weeded out as well?
USNews & World Report reported this past summer that the Apple switch ads are questionable. They tried to interview the actual people in the ads, but apparently they are all under NDA.
They were allowed to interview two of them, but only with an Apple representative present. Sounds like they were trying to interview someone living in Iraq?
Furthermore, all of the Apple switchers were paid for their involvement. Who wouldn't switch if they were given a free Powerbook + expenses? Then it also turns out that many of the "switchers" have employment connections with Apple, or work for magazines which receive large amounts of Apple advertising, etc.
It's just kind of interesting. Microsoft's advertising tactics have never been as unethical as what Apple has been doing with the switch campaign, and yet who bears the brunt of the attacks here?
So did Microsoft impose sanctions on themselves when it was found out that during the Microsoft trial letters from a "grassroots campaign" sent to politicians were found to be fake? Was Bill or Steve castigated?
Puhleeese Steve, do you think anybody believes the crap rolling out of your mouth by the bucketfull?
Um, I don't know about you, but putting up a picture of somebody and claiming that it's someone else (which is what obviously happened in the Microsoft ad) is a TOTAL sham. It's borderline fraud and dishonest to boot
An ISP I worked for many years ago used to do this same sort of thing: stock photos for members of the company. Customers laughed at them because they got to meet the real people at a few trade shows. It sure didn't reflect well on the ISP and Microsoft will have to spin this at 7500RPM to try and fix it.
Uh, hate to break it to you, but there's no such thing as "truth in advertising" -- it's all as gray as it gets. Do you really think that your waitress will come over and lick your hair if you use Maxim haircoloring? C'mon.
/. IGN, Amazon to give positive reviews to movies, games, gear and other products? They call that particular form of spin "grassroots" or "planting a seed".
;-)
No easter bunny or Santa Claus, either.
And the Lone Gunmen are dead (while I'm busy ripping apart your consumer conditioning).
[even further offtopic: is LGD an acceptable acronym now?]
Seriously, though -- perception is reality.
In advertising & pr we're paid to sell our clients' shit. Shit being: image, brand or product. No more, no less. We're making the perception for the consumer. The consumer turns that perception into their own reality.
Did you know that ad and marketing people cruise discussion boards including
In bars, you'll have teams of women out together ordering and being vocal about some new drink that they love. Ever wonder how Red Bull & vodka came about?
In the media you see segments about...oh, I don't know... duct tape being a cure for warts. I got $20 that that's a packaged advertorial and the study was paid for by the manufacturer. You see prepackaged advertorial on CNN and your local news all the time.
As a matter of fact, copy and paste has made PR drones' lives much easier since most reporters and editors don't even bother editing press releases passed off as news.
These are just a few examples. But they're everywhere. And every publicly voiced opinion about anything (down to politics) is suspect.
In any job, sooner or later you're going to have to cut a corner that doesn't sit too well with you because of management or client pressure. As geeks/programmers, we should all know that far too well.
Your job in advertising is to sell. Period. If a widget sucks, you can't say that outright and expect sales, can you?
So the answer to the burning question is that yes, at first, there are sleepless nights. Then you get desensitied to the whole mess and realize that you're being paid for a service: to make the client happy, and to give them positive ROI. Later, you burn out on the whole mess and can't stand to watch TV or read an ad in the paper without getting hyper cynical.
For the record, that's the stage I'm in now (can you tell?) -- I've since left agency work and started my own business -- although I'll illustrate or code something freelance for agencies from time to time because I've got that connection.
There is a *lot* of burnout and churn in agency work for precisely those reasons -- not to mention the fact that if the client pays for and approves a job, then gets caught for using marketing tactics -- chances are very likely that the agency will be publicly humiliated -- for doing the job that's expected of them.
On the other hand, the term "hell client" gets new meaning when the client singles out an *employee* at the firm and publicly humiliates (sanctions? WTF? LMAO and all that) them for doing their job.
To answer your other question, I'm not catholic. As a matter of fact, I don't know many catholics in the advertising business. Perhaps you're on to something with the whole guilt thing?
It's closer to "Ah, the new campaign is ready. 18 hours straight of sleep, then I'm gonna drink myself into a coma and sleep another 18 before I have to start the next job and not sleep for ANOTHER week until it's done."
Salud,
--dr00gy
Unless you are providing medical advice from a "Doctor" there is no requirement that you claim that the actor is not who they purport to be. MS did, however, make the claim on the web page that this "ad" was an unsolicited piece of mail. They blatently lied about their source. This isn't a situation where they didn't reveal that this was an employee, they denied it in the ad. This is not a simple case of making claims about their product that are untrue, which in fact riddled this entire ad, this is a situation where they said that the person that they got this from DIDN'T work for them and that had no affiliation to them. Maybe you might think about actually reading the damn thing before you make ignorant comments about it. On top of all of that, you don't appear bothered by misleading advertising, maybe you should...
Jesus fucking christ, I expected the crowd here to have a grasp of the English language beyond the quagmire of technological acronyms... then again I didn't expect a former coke monkey who couldn't find oil in Texas to become the president either.
From m-w.com:
Main Entry: cas-ti-gate
Date: 1607
: to subject to severe punishment, reproof, or criticism
synonym see PUNISH
One entry found for castrate.
Main Entry: cas-trate
Date: 1609
1 a : to deprive of the testes : GELD
1 b : to deprive of the ovaries : SPAY
2 : to render impotent or deprive of vitality especially by psychological means
Castigation != Castration.
Yes, the difference can be quite important.
since the article is no longer in its cache. Fortunately, there's a mirror at scripting.com for those who haven't already grabbed this for desktop wallpaper.
For those that don't yet know, Ellen Feiss' fan club is at ellenfeiss.net.
bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep
cpeterso
Don't forget the reason Mr Balmer is down here in Australia right now... to address the threat of Telstra (Microsoft's biggest customer in Southern Hemisphere) SWITCHING to Linux.
http://www.itnews.com.au/story.cfm?ID=10596
It would be nice if they did...
pi seconds is a nanocentury