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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.
. . . oops! We got caught! Why, this was one rouge contractor who didn't meet our standards of conduct. We'll see that s/he is appropriately flogged in the public square. Then we'll go on doing the same things, only being more careful not to be so obvious about it.
From an organizational perspective, this renders down to if we screw up, you're the one left swinging.
At the best (or worst, depending on the angle you're looking from) she came up with the concept and it was okayed by her superiors -- it did end up on the Microsoft site, after all, and from the article she wrote, I seriously doubt she has the technical skills to hack in and put it there herself.
Microsoft's claim that they're the innocent victims of the manipulations of some ad agency schemer is so obviously ridiculous and transparent I can't believe they're even trying it.
It wasn't a outright lie. she had switched to XP, and wrote about it. She changed some of the less relevent details so that people didn't dismiss it as a piece of marketing fluff, but that was all.
The facts remain true. She did switch. She did find it easy.
Besides, this is marketing. It's not expected to be 100% true. How do we know that any of Apple's "switch" stories aren't simply made up?
Let me get this straight, Microsoft hires her to do this little commercial, I imagine not giving much of a shit whether or not she switched. Perhaps she mentioned the word switch, so she seemed to be qualified. Then they will actually punish her for their retarded PR mistake? This is like a parent telling their kids, "Jonny, go tell our neighbors about our dog that we don't have." And then once the neighbors call up asking why Jonny is going on and on about a non-existant dog, the parents say, "JONNY! GET YOUR ASS OVER HERE, YOU LYING YOU LITTLE SOB, IMA GONNA SMACK YOU DOWN!" Punishing your workers for the very thing you hired them to do demonstrates piss poor decision making on the managers parts. MS is the one who came up with this rediculous faux-switch campaign, shooting the messenger who brought it to the people is just irresponsible. Personally, this sounds like a pink-slip relay, everyone handing the responsiblity down until it arrives at the foot of the person who listened to what everyone told them to do.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
Blame the real culprit...the nefarious marketing hack Don Funk (donfu@microsoft.com). Here's an image from that ad. Note the name of the user who is logged on.
Valerie may have written the copy but do you think she got the stock image, drove to Microsoft, got on Don Funk's computer, took a screen shot, then uploaded it to the server? Perhaps she just made a "Don Funk" user on her machine and hacked into the MS web site.
Ah well, Ballmer's on the case - "I will certainly castigate the offender." Ooh, I never thought they'd go for castigation at MS...after all, that would leave them with eunuchs.
Micirosoft has been known for this type of behaviour. Using one of their own PR persons to pretend to be a 'switcher' (for the lack of a better term) is just par for the course
I'm not surprised MS is planning reprisals for this person. Pretending to be an ordinary joe off the street that switched is ok - getting caught as a stooge in one of MS's standard FUD strategies though - that's just not acceptable.
<sarcasm>
How dare she be so stupid as to not have gone into hiding and prevent the damage to MS's precious reputation?
</sarcasm>
Karma: Shagadelic (mostly affected by those tight knickers - yeah baby, yeah!)
Hi Steve! (I know you're reading.)
What does Microsoft's code of behavior have to say about employee conduct that gets the company convicted in the Federal court system for multiple violations of the Sherman Act?
What does the code say about executives who lie under oath in videotaped depositions?
What does the code say about manufacturing evidence in a trial?
What does the code say about attempting to intimidate potentially hostile witnesses?
Will you be "weeding out" any of the Microsoft employees who are known to have done all of these things?
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
You're overlooking one thing here. From the outset, this was being compared to Apple's 'Switch' campaign in which they use real people (as far as we know ;-) )
So...in addition to this article being paid for, they didn't use the real person to whom the article was attributed, thus making it even *further* from Apple's campaign than was originally thought. That's why there's such an uproar about this being a 'stock' photo. It wouldn't be a big deal if it was, say, a webpage purely about product features or tech support.
Also...another point that I'd like to make, just because I sometimes enjoy kicking dead horses (it's therapeutic, you should try it), is that in All of Apple's 'Switch' campaign ads and their website ads, they never include instructions on how to switch. That's what makes the article even more fake. Yes, they have a page on how to do the switch, I know, but they don't say, "Hi, I'm some kewl dude who switched to the Mac, and here's exactly, click by click, how I did it" in any of the ads.
Just an FYI. Ad agencies and PR firms may have the appearance of being dishonest and what not, as you allege, but in the end, everything the ad agency or PR firm does is approved by SOMEONE on the client's side. Someone at Microsoft saw this, read it, and agreed to it - probably went through a couple of rounds of revisions to get the wording right and to choose which images to show in the article. Ad agencies don't just go off on their own and do whatever they think ought to be done. Thinking that is ludicrous.
Not only is the PR consultant who wrote the piece not at fault because it was approved by someone at Microsoft, but the initial concepts of the idea and each draft of the article was routed through various levels of higher-up directors, in an ad agency, you'd have a designer, an art director, a creative director and an account executive before the client even sees anything. I'm not sure how its structured in a PR firm, but its likely similar. For Microsoft to target one person for such an elaborate article is ridiculous.
Cheers.
I'm really not trolling here, and I'm not advocating MS in any way, but it seems that a lot of otherwise bright people are hung up on this being a Microsoft blunder when this happens everyday in advertising.
When you see an ad on TV for herpes medication, do you think that person really has herpes? Of course not - you couldn't pay anyone enough to do a commercial like that. They are paid actors, and nothing more. They may even hate the product they are selling.
The PR lady is nothing different; she was, in effect, a paid actor. So they made a false testimony, so what? Advertisers do that all the time to drum up business. It seems slimy and under-handed, but it's the way it works most of the time.
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
Not so sure about that. They have had their marketing come back and bite them in the ass before. One I remember is the whole Novell customer targeted marketing when they told many Novell Netware users that Novell was dead. I think they also made some ads a while back where they showed a person painted into a corner (and the paint color was Sun's color)
Anyway, my point is that I don't think they either
- don't pay attention to their marketing drones
- get off on causing contoversy (no such thing as bad press?)
- are so out of touch with reality that making up fictional switch stories sounded like a good plan
- All of the above
Hell, with all the money Ballmer and Gates make, I bet they can get some pretty powerful hallucinogens.today is spelling optional day.