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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.)"
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.
Learned what? How expensive is advertising? How expensive do you expect the fine to be? Do the math.
:D
Now some Jail time would be welcome
Check out my journal on the subject from last week. I was going to submit it, but for the life of me couldn't figure out where it'd go, assumed it would be rejected and blogged it instead. :)
Triv
Terrible mental image of Steve Balmer wearing a sweat soaked butterfly suit and roller blades, yelling "Developers! Developers!"....
*cringe*
...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.
No, it was not okay for IBM. Here is an article that explains why:
IBM caught tagging San Fran streets with Linux ads
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Why these people dont post the no registration required links provided by Google news I don't know
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...
What bugs me is the two stories about the Linux Grafitti was all about a good advertising scheme, and this is about 'vandalization'. Petty narrowmindedness is annoying.
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.
You really think Microsoft would have learned after doing this before and having it backfire on them.
When the Xbox launched here in Australia, Microsoft spent obscene amounts of money on the advertising campaign (it actually began a few months prior to launch). Part of this was to spraypaint the green Xbox X on the sidewalk at pretty much every bus stop in central Sydney. Needless to say, the relevent local councils were not amused.
As far as I know, the responsible parties were ordered by the court to pay for council workers to clean every single spray. However, Microsoft is nothing if not careful, and instead of doing the original grafitti themselves, they'd contracted it to a local, well-known (in the industry) PR company.
Last we heard, poor [company name omitted] were stuck not only with the bill for councils to clean up the Microsoft grafitti, but also the responsability to clean it off themselves (the more they got to, the less council had to do and thus the less they paid).
Janie took my gun...
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.
This is not a troll, but an observation: When it's IBM spray-painting Linux graffiti messages, it's free speech, but when it's Microsoft painting butterflies, it's vandalism?
"It's illegal," she said, "and they're going to get a lot of publicity for it."
I think that was the whole point of all of this.
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.
it's not just SF, here in Chicago as well. you can still see the faint image of Tux at the Jackson street subway entrance to the Blue line.
Yeah, but tux is cool. Also, the graffiti was in black (against white concrete), not candy colored.
Most importantly, perhaps, IBM did it first. When they did it it was an original, innovative idea. Microsoft's gaudy re-run is simply so much tasteless, derivative kitch.
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.
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.
Please, at least show Mr. Ballmer the courtesy of using his real name.
"Are you being weird, or sarcastic?" said Emma. I said I didn't know because I get the two feelings mixed up.
I like the title of this article. Vandlizing. Very "professional" journalism. LOL. Anyway.
For everyone in here having a little fit about "this is stupid" and "does this work" is falling into the whole genius of the marketing ploy. This isn't to persuade someone to buy the product, this is an effort to generate mass press for next to free (minus some self dignity). They are getting you to TALK ABOUT THEIR PRODUCT. Now you guys will run around to your fellow coworkers "Did you see the stupid Microsoft butterfly thing?". And they will tell another employee, who actually isn't technically savy, and might find it interesting, go look it up, and sign up for it. In effect, you, who disdain microsoft, are being used to help them secure customers.
Let's think about it, they have an entire article on slashdot, a pretty pro Linux group, to discuss the matter about them dressing up a bunch of people for a few bucks and putting them on rollerblades. But the old saying is true, the only bad press is no press at all. The IBM/LINUX graffiti thing proved that. They received TONS of press for just a few, inexpensive pictures of the Tux.
Marketing 101. Take a course, you may like it.
hmm.... Microsoft is advertising by using bugs. Ironic, isn't?
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.
The microsoft signs are made with appliqués that are just stuck to walls by static electricity. The ones on sidewalks are can be peeled off. This creates undue waste and probably could create hazards for people who try to nagivate over the sidewalk appliqués in wheelchairs. I expect the people in butterfly suits create an annoyance for all.
The linux campaign was done with biodegradable chalk. Big difference. No harmful waste. Less hazard for transportation, although some say that chalk makes rodes more slippery. And as far as I know, they didn't have people in Tux suits swarming around and creating more distractions.
Both of them create visual distractions and probably shouldn't have been attempted in the first place without authorisation from the city. But the IBM campaign was definitely better thought out than this microsoft one.
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.
Mind you, after the browser wars, which completely broke how version numbering should effectively be done, this is probably no longer true. Version numbering has lost out to commercialization; there's a lot of good examples of where software changes over a 'major' version number could really be classified as 'minor' version changes, at least to some people (photoshop, IE, to name a few), but marketing knows that customers are more likely to purchase an upgrade if its from "x.0" to "x+1.0", as oppsed to "x.0" to "x.1". Additionally, there's been a few hokey version jumps in some programs as to keep them on par with a competitors program (as the parent post alludes to) - just as AMD is trying to keep up with the Megahertz Myth with Intel in naming their new chips.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
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!"
Since when has Microsoft obeyed laws?
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
Does anyone else find it appropriate that microsoft is using a bug as the icon for their new promotion?
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
Ok, I must have missed the story about the IBM San-Fran chalking faisco, but someone posted the relevant links. The real IDG story, and the exclusive coverage of the IDG story, at the Register.
The short story is that IBM got caught spraypainting / chalking Tux and the caption "Peace, Love, and Linux" on the sidewalks of numerous street corners all over the city. They claimed it was "biodegradable", if not "easily water soluble" chalk, and were banking on it disappearing the next time it rained. It didn't. The article doesn't mention whether it eventually did wash off, after several rains (think back to college days - did that chalk only last one rainfall?), or whether they had to break down and have it removed first.
I have a picture of one of the MSN butterflies applied to the 7th Avenue Station sign, but I don't know where to post it. You'd say it was quite tasteful if you saw it. It looks like part of the sign. I hear a lot of arguments about why MS's campaign is evil, whereas IBM's was just and righteous. I'm going to play Devil's Advocate for a minute here, since no one else seems to want to.
I don't want to hear anyone in this country say that the reason MS's campaign is evil is because they create waste. I'm not saying they don't, but is that the reason that you think fast-food, snail-mail solicitations from charitable organizations, and buying soda is evil? Let's be honest about how much waste we all generate, whether or not we're tacking up little butterflies to subway stations...
And the rollerbladers are evil, not because they are generating waste, but because they're a "distraction". A pedestrian might walk into an open manhole because they were too distracted by the butterfly men. Uh huh. MS has pretty deep pockets. Let the frivolous lawsuits begin. If you can squeeze any money out of their lawyers, you've earned it.
What's that leave? Evil because they're advertising for MSN 8, instead of a righteous cause such as Linux, therefore anything they do, regardless of eco-friendliness and distractive potential is Evil? I don't think a rational argument can be made for or against that, so I don't want to debate it.
MS is evil, because IBM did it first. Hate to disappoint, but IBM did not invent the concept of publicity stunt. I have no idea how far back it goes, but in modern times I've got a reference here for 1917 before the original release of the first Tarzan movie. Harry Reichenbach was hired to promote it, so he anonymously let loose an oranguatan dressed in a tuxedo inside a fancy hotel filled with New York elite. The newspapers had a field day, and a few days later, Reichenbach called to let them know that it had been a stunt for Tarzan, so they covered it again, this time letting everyone know it had been for the movie. Tarzan made a killing at the box-office.
As far as I'm concerned, every publicity stunt since then has been Evil. Evil! (whoops, I think I lost my serious edge. Anyway, my source on the Tarzan story is Uncle John's Biggest Ever Bathroom Reader, from the scholarly "Bathroom Reader's Institute", which is an absolute crack-pipe for trivia junkies like myself.)
You may now resume the one-sided witchhunt. =)
Butterflies in Seattle
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my