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Microsoft Vandalizes NYC
Brooklyn Bob writes "The New York Times (free registration etc.) is reporting that New York Tells Microsoft to Get Its Butterfly Decals Out of Town. Sure, it's "corporate graffiti", but the butterfly looks pretty good on the subway entrance." The story only covers a small part of their efforts to promote MSN, the "Microsoft operating system required" internet service. The first submission we got about the campaign described another part of it: Latent IT writes "I wish I had a link to submit with this, but strange things are afoot in New York City. At 61st and Broadway, 30-40 guys and gals in butterfly suits colored in the Microsoft colors, and carrying MSN banners just rollerbladed by, screaming at the top of their lungs down the middle of Broadway. Interestingly enough, this took them right near the under construction AOL Time Warner building. It seemed worth jotting down, but they were literally gone and down the street before I could reach my digital camera. (Place all bug on windshield jokes here.)"
If only we could get the Microsoft color-painted butterfly people to rollerskate themselves into the Empire State Building a la 9/11 thing, then we'd be all set.
Scrumpdillicious!
30-40 guys and gals in butterfly suits colored in the Microsoft colors, and carrying MSN banners just rollerbladed by, screaming at the top of their lungs down the middle of Broadway.
Give it up for us! Whoooooo hooooo!
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Perhaps this is just a stunt for MS' new product, MSJackass for their new cable channel MSMTV?
it's not going to stop until you wise up, no it's not going to stop. so just give up.
30-40 guys and gals in butterfly suits colored in the Microsoft colors, and carrying MSN banners just rollerbladed by, screaming at the top of their lungs
What a fantastically compelling ad campaign! I'll take two of whatever it is they are selling.
I am a Karma Library.
Terrible mental image of Steve Balmer wearing a sweat soaked butterfly suit and roller blades, yelling "Developers! Developers!"....
*cringe*
How old are these marketing nazi's to believe that people actually give two shits about a product or the hype? Sounds all too much like a high school pep rally.
"Simon Says, Fuck You" - George Carlin
...to put their army of mascots out there, and then it's Godzilla Versus Mothra all over again.
-- We live in a world where lemonade is artificial and soap has real lemon.
Am I the only one secretly wishing all of those butterfly-clad idiots were magically transported to some impoverished shanty-town (like in Bangladesh or Brazil) so they could convince all of the people who are drinking raw sewage in their water how wonderful the benefits of MSN 8 will be?
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
Is why these butterfly outfits are so "frumpy". If they really want to sell they need something that competes with the iMac girl. I want my (female) human butterfly wearing nothing but wings and a smile.
Is there a single, original idea at Microsoft? Can't they come up with *anything* themselves? You know you suck when you're looking to IBM for "hip" inspiration...
30-40 guys and gals in butterfly suits colored in the Microsoft colors, and carrying MSN banners just rollerbladed by, screaming at the top of their lungs down the middle of Broadway.
I would love to see an equivalent number of guys in penguin suits go beat them up. I'd pay good money to see that.
What they really needed was a group of people dressed up as Tux on rollerblades chasing the Butterflies out of town. :)
Q: How did you hear about our products?
A:
[] Recomended by a friend
[] Saw ad in magazine
[] Screaming butterflies spoke of them
I am a Karma Library.
But, my question is... Is it illegal to paintball the MS skaters? Does that fall under artistic freedom? :)
No they should get some guys in penguin suits to go beat the crap out of the butterflys. Oh wait...that would be illegal too. Maybe they should settle this on the 'rink, where fighting only gets you in the penalty box.
>>A single summons was issued, with a $50 penalty,
Erm... isn't that the bill Bill uses to wipe his ass?
Homer: Facts are meaningless, you can use facts to prove anything that's remotely true!
They're just MSN with us.
A butterfly flapping its wings in Manhattan can cause a hurricane in Redmond, Washington.
----------
Manifesto for the Peoples of the Third Millennium
MSN, the "Microsoft operating system required" internet service
As opposed to AOL, the "Microsoft operating system required" internet service.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
Well, with the ever increasing use of tinted windows in cars these days maybe they could have turned the corner and ran into... ...wait for it... ...the blue windscreen of death.
Sorry.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Think it hurts to appeal to the 'bad-ass anti-establishment' gen-y'ers?
So now IBM is the 'laid back hippie' company, and MSFT is the 'bad assed party guy' company.
Apple is still the "Mack-in-what?" company.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
hmm.... Microsoft is advertising by using bugs. Ironic, isn't?
I think it would be more like Place all bug on Windows jokes here
or perhaps: Place all bugs in Windows jokes here
Well MSN and AOL are on 8, Mac has gone to OS X, MS Office is on version 10. Nobody's higher than 10. See, what I've done is created a version 11. That's right, no one else has 11. This is one better than anything anyone else can hope for.
30-40 guys and gals in butterfly suits
They're not butterflies...they're moths.
And they're on their way to fight the Uncommon Cold.
Just saw a friggin' flash pop-up ad for M$N8.
Great! How many of our pet peeves will they hit on? What's next, M$ flash SPAM?
Is it just me, or does the butterfly look like a gay Arthur from the Tick? Possibly redundant I know.
"It is one thing to do something radical first, and to do it with a little style. It is another thing to copycat with little imaginatino and no style (a garish, gay butterfly logo no less). Promoting a network service even AOLers are smart enough to avoid doesn't help either."
Ripping off other's clever ideas is what MicroSoft is all about. Hence their "switch" ad written by a golem.
And it's common wisdom in the low end advertizing business that annoying sells. Just look at used car ads on the radio. When you're selling a online service to idiots who don't value their rights, yelling "ME TOO!" as loud as you can is probably an effective strategy.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Tomorrow I want to see 60 fat little circus midgets dressed up like penguins skateboarding through downtown NYC, screaming at the top of their lungs, and throwing rocks at all the windows:
"We're short! We're fat! We can't fly! We're pissed! And Windows sucks!"
From the article:
"I trust and hope that these offensive activities are not the authorized acts of your organization's employees and agents," Mr. Fernandez [Assistant counsel of the Transportation Department] wrote..."
Does Mr. Fernandez perhaps believe that Microsoft employees paid for thousands of 20" Microsoft butterflies with Microsoft advertising out of their own pockets?
OF COURSE IT WAS AN AUTHORIZED ACT YOU TWIT!
My
Limekiller
I'm envisioning a group of 50 beat down, tattered and torn butterflies that got the short straw and had to skate through the Bronx and Queens.
"Want in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up first." - My Dad
Does anyone else find it appropriate that microsoft is using a bug as the icon for their new promotion?
I live in New York. They put all of their selfish trash around my living space and I've decided to use it against them. I'm turning their advertisment vandalism into word-of-mouth sabotage. (word-of-mouth is the best way to get the message out, right?)
;)
I have gone from disliking Microsoft to hating them for spoiling my living environment so to retaliate. . . Everytime someone brings up this abject vandalism in conversation, I make a very specific, understandable point about how Microsoft vandalizes the economic environment and acts as a regular sabateur and law-breaker when it serves their petty interest. It may be annoying to them (heck, I may seem annoying to them by doing it), but these people know that I know what I'm talking about and they start hating Microsoft too. They are reminded of it everytime they see that butterfly trash too. . . hundreds of times a day. I've even heard some people spread the word (of disgust)
Is this the intended effect? Just because we remember it and talk about it, does that serve their intentions? Everyone recognizes and talks about swastikas at some time in their lives, but I wouldn't call that "buzz" positive.
It'd be awesome being stuck in an elevator with Ellen Feiss and the Dude you're getting a Dell guy. But only if Ellen brought a few joints. And you know she would. Imagine getting into a 3-way with those two. It'd be totally awesome!!!
"is that better?"
"well, it's one better, now isn't it?"
"why didn't you just make 10 better, and call it 10?"
"..... this ISP goes to 11."
"You want a toe? I can get you a toe by three o'clock... with nail polish."
Is it illegal to paintball the MS skaters?
Legal or not, you should never fire a paintball gun at someone not playing paintball.
That's what real guns are for
The butterfly is just another Microsoft bug.
Arthur was able to get a job after "The TICK" was cancelled on Fox...
a couple days ago on CNN or Yahoo... I just figured that's the punishment the PR lady got for getting caught during Microsoft's last advertising scheme (i.e. the 'anti-switch' campaign...)
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
Hey kids! Mom reading your diary? Dad recording your phone conversations? Get back at them by installing MSN 8! Thanks to Microsoft's new partnership with Disney and the general cluelessness of your parents, you can spy on them like never before! Have emails sent to you detailing your Mom and Dad's web activities! Worried Dad might send you to military school? Mom having an affair with her 'aromatherapist'? Find out for sure with Microsoft's new spyware - MSN 8!
They'll never know because *you're in charge* of installing software, reinstalling Windows, and upgrading the family PC!
It's never been so easy!
Act now, and you'll get a Digitally Restricted copy of 'Mickey Mouse's - How I Fucked Hollywood, and Lived to Squeek About It'. A sordid tale of government corruption, Congresswhores, Copyright Extentions, and the Legal Defense of Public Domain works as if Mickey himself wrote them!
Hurry! Sign up now, before Linux is ready for the Desktop!
It's true. Until this week, I hadn't heard of Microsoft. But now I have.
Hmm... makes me wonder as well, would penguins eat butterflies? :)
emacs 21.2 : now more than just the internet.
Article says the fine is $50.
I imagine that's gonna bankrupt Microsoft almost as badly as buying X-boxes from them will!
No such thing as bad publicity?
What if some executive weirdo plans to spearhead a new campaign by having Bill Gates having sex with underaged donkeys while drinking urine from a empty skull of a dead horse while tweaking the nipples of senior citizen monkeys.
I think anything weirder than that would just scare people away from microsoft.
.smell my feet.
Ok, Bill Gates sent his beautiful minions to deface NYC, so to all you NY slashdotters, let's gather together and raid Bill's mansion, and paste up Apple and Tux stickers all over his walls! We'll also run through his house screaming at 4am about the greatness of open source development.
Visually, it doesn't bother me that they put the butterflys around, they're pretty. But morally, this is a blatant slap in the face at NYC's regulations, and it's a company saying "we're above the law, we're more powerful than you." If a hacker deface the NYC website and got caught, how many years would he get in jail?
$8.95/mo web hosting
They had at least 30 rollerbladers (i.e. fruitbooters) skating around dressed like purple butterflies holding signs. Apparently no one liked them as they said "no one likes us".
Then one got clipped by a taxi.
Damn butterflies.
they barely escaped the CD shooting from the AOL building. damn!
Of course we like Linux too, but Tux as a logo is pure genius - who can resist asking what the cute penguin is?
IBM didn't do it first. I lived in Manhattan from 1994-1998, and I saw spray painted ads on the sidewalks back then (and it was certainly *not* chalk!). That's not to mention all of the other crazy stuff that people paint on the sidewalks. (I don't know if it's there anymore, but there used to be painted footsteps that went on for blocks in the east village, and then a few weeks or months later, someone painted tools (yeah, like hammers and wrenches) along side the footsteps.) I think the first ad I ever saw painted on a NY sidewalk was from a sneaker company or shoe store, but it definitely wasn't nike.
Reminds me of the SNL skit with Guiliani which was a fake commercial about his new crack down on graffiti. If they saw your tag on a wall or somewhere, a special police anti-graffiti division would spray paint the word "sucks" under your tag. (and for multiple-time offenders, they'd have a special police artist paint "sucks" in the same exact style as your tag.) It'd be funny if someone painted or even just sharpie'd "sucks" onto all of the butterflies.
Anyone have a .NET?