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Mainstream Press "Cringes" At Win7 Launch Parties
lurking_giant writes "Well, Microsoft has done it again with the YouTube Windows 7 launch party video that is turning the stomachs of even the mainstream press with its clueless and campy marketing style. A Washington Post reader was quoted as saying 'If Microsoft had been put in charge of marketing sex, the human race would have ended long ago, because no one would be caught dead doing something that uncool.'" Even the Guardian's resident die-hard Apple hater calls it "the most nauseating advert in history."
Most advertisements only evoke one or two emotions. This one manages to make me feel despair, disgust, fear, and rage, all at the same time.
They've truly taken it to the next level.
I threw up due to the fast pans and edits long before the content made me barf. AG
Wow, Microsoft.... Just, wow...
It got attention. Isn't that the point of marketing?
And I dare say MS wasn't expecting to convert slashdot posters with usernames like "ihatewinXP" to using Windows 7 with these ads... :)
...are not generating any free press for Microsoft.
T=5:43: Can you believe that Microsoft put the launch of Windows 7 in our hands? Couldn't have said it better myself. I love the token nerd, attractive woman, old-but-hip person, and black guy. It's like they hired marketing undergraduates to design the video.
Here you are talking about Windows 7.
That Microsoft is in fact the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
Holy fu**ing sh*t. They never stop, do they ? when you think they reached the lower bottom they could reach, they just find a new, lower one. This is incredible. It's almost so bad advertising they approach it from a new horizon : it's so bad you want to make your friends watch it, and you want to watch it again, fascinated by the overall bad taste of the all thing. Maybe it's some kind of secret genius marketing scheme.
They think they're on solid ground to criticize the marketing of a company that actually made money last year? Let me know the the newspapers entice their readership back to levels that are slightly above the number of people who'll read my post.
Either Microsoft is planning on selling Windows 7 like tuppaware or what I just watched was the introduction to a very bad porno.
Just think of how many different interests can be satisfied with this cast.
It's ironic that they're using YouTube, a Google service, to perpetrate this masterpiece on civilization.
It really does instigate a wash of emotions, and it amazes me that anyone can discern individual feelings out of watching it. To quote the awesomest six year old I know, it was "awkweird".
I was about 10 seconds, and this was without audio. The camera work is that of a douche, the camera is always panning at least a little bit, and there were too many stupid snap zooms. I realize this has become popular lately, but I start feeling like I'm getting tipsy.
The whole concept is deranged, if you're putting on a party, don't do it for marketing someone else's product. Heck, any kind of product party is deranged, it says to the invitees that you're so bored, you'll attend a thinly veiled product pitch. And the host? They get a copy of Windows 7, a few napkins and streamers. Dude, don't sell yourself out for napkins.
They really should have let the product market itself. Because for once they have a halfway decent product. Remember when they said Vista was as good as OSX? And then we used Vista and perhaps we should have treated their marketing campaign like a child with mental deficiencies? Like it's not polite to laugh at them, because they are trying...
But Windows 7 is actually the product Vista was supposed to be. But they're trying to sell it as something new. The only way that Microsoft could market this is, "Yeah, Windows Vista sucks ass. The UI didn't make sense, and it was often slow for no apparent reason. We'll acknowledge that now that we have a replacement. We know that almost every computer shipped with Vista has been converted to Windows XP. Here's the produce that fixes all those problems."
The only way to regain consumer trust is to admit your faults. Or just say nothing and let consumers do your advertising for you. I can already see the tweets - "Windows 7 not a steaming pile of dogshit!". That's the kind of grassroots movement that sells software.
Uuuuuuuuuuuhuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhh... drool, pass out. No wonder adding comments has been disabled for the video. This reminds me of anti-smoking ads that are so lame and stupid (usually directed at teens) that they make you want to smoke.
I think its more Microsoft attempting to be similar to Apple. But the problem is they are failing because PCs are just too common. Its not a "choice" to use MS software, its just there by default. And its a pain for the average user. Either they spend a lot of $$$ getting an easy to use Mac or save money and get a PC with problems. Thats just how the average person sees things.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
well... start the countdown: implosion in 10,9,8,7...
this is easily the worst promotion I have ever seen. Microsoft, please for the love of god fire your ad agency. There is 'incompetent', and then there's this extra-special, groundbreaking new plateau of retarded-ness.
I didn't think it was possible to kill Windows 7 with a single video -- BUT IT JUST HAPPENED.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
The video is perfect. The video correctly represent Windows 7 and its design philosophy. And it evokes the same feelings in me that using Windows does.
Congratulations!
Yeah, and? We were all talking about Vista too and that affected sales, how again?
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
It's a great video. I found it oddly relaxing. Also, watch the clock on the oven. The time leaps all over the place on it.
They didn't even have the sense to shoot without a clock there to show that one will ask a question, then the answer will be from seven minute prior, then we leap back two hours etc...
Just absolutely absurd.
watching 'two girls, one cup'. At least that one held my interest as well as repulsing me.
"You can't really dust for vomit" --Nigel Tufnel
This is a company that's trying to get back the fanfare that they lost after dragging out XP in three service packs, then a real loser with Vista, and misses those lines at Best Buys. Community support makes Windows 7 a kind of empty event. We wanted Vista to be cool, but it was a slap in the face. Trying to buy back user fanboyness isn't easy to do, and this one looks like a backlash attempt.
If you make good stuff, they'll come and love you. Viz others currently enjoying heaps of (oft undeserved) fanboy love.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Just make sure your guest list is racially and demographically neutral, and that everybody adheres to the J. Crew wardrobe requirement.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
remind you of a certain fan base, mr. penquin?
In all fairness, when did Microsoft ever have fanfare? Informed computing enthusiasts were sick of Windows after 10 minutes, opting to at least diversify into Apple and free Unix, and nobody else even knew there was anything other than Windows, and treated it as part of the computer.
Now that people realise they have choices, Microsoft is scrambling to do what it never had to do - actually market its operating system - and has shown all of the competency of a high school dropout.
Sam ty sig.
It's viral marketing. They know that nobody is going to have one of these idiotic "launch parties".
They've intentionally made the worst ad they could (while still making it somehow realistic enough for people to buy it) in order to get people to talk about windows 7.
I did not know when the launch-date for this was. This ad has been posted on all of the major tech-news blogs. Now I do. Mission accomplished.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
I don't buy that. If your press tarnishes your brand, it's not good press. If people start laughing at your product, because of your shitty ads, that's not good for your product. It's not enough to get your name out there (who hasn't heard of Microsoft, or Windows?) you have to add some sparkle to your brand or you're wasting your money. Microsoft has gotten very bad at this lately.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
> Ah, but the 21st century has television only dreamt of in the previous
> century...
I saw some 21st century television a few years back when I was visiting my father. It has not improved.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I think its more Microsoft attempting to be similar to Apple.
Isn't that what they've been done since Windows 1.0? Similar, yet different enough not to loose the look'n'feel litiations. Or am I showing my age here? But yes, you absolutely correct, they are trying to address their image problem (and coming off looking like wannabees).
And its a pain for the average user.
It's even more pain for the expert user. When you're manipulation several thousands of files at the same time you realise that what Windows needs is an OS! (Well a shell actually -- personally I operate Windows via a Python shell). Yes the Mac is 'easy,' but for myself the thing that makes it really servicable is Terminal.app. Though I should add of the three systems I use (*nix, osx and win in that order) I'm surprised to find myself on occasion actually using the GUI on the mac!? Wierd.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Except Scientology offers you peace of mind, or at least they pretend to. This was a briefing video for Microsoft marketing personnel. Nothing more, nothing less. Only Microsoft for some reason decided to point it at random people hoping they will just decide they need to market Windows for them.
It's not exactly breaking news that marketing people have no connection to reality but this is bad even for marketing people. It's like they fed an AI with all the scrapped concepts from the paper can of a marketing firm and told it to acript them an advertisement.
Given the Songsmith video and the Seinfeld ads I think that might actually be the case.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I couldn't get the word 'scientology' out of my head when watching this
I was thinking "Amway"
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
It got attention. Isn't that the point of marketing? And I dare say MS wasn't expecting to convert slashdot posters with usernames like "ihatewinXP" to using Windows 7 with these ads... :)
Selling more product, or raising your brand's identity is the point of marketing. This does the opposite. The point of this story is that it's not just slashdot folk who are hearing about this - it's all over the mainstream media. The problem (for Microsoft) is that the Windows 7 launch is supposed to remove the negative associations that Vista caused people to have. For a while, the "buzz on the street" was that Windows 7 is actually a decent OS, unlike Vista. But as soon as the average person sees this House Party video, they are going to be very suspicious that Windows 7 is nothing but marketing hype, and may not actually be a decent OS after all. That's very bad for Microsoft, especially after the success they've had in viral marketing of Windows 7 so far.
... and then they built the supercollider.
It's actually more than lipstick, but it's also anti-climactic.
are we talking about win7 or snow leopard?
That's because the video is intended to mirror the real-life experience of using a Microsoft OS.
To quote Charlie Brooker;
It's grim, it's slow, everything's badly designed and nothing really works properly: using Windows is like living in a communist bloc nation circa 1981.
Seriously though, I think the video is pretty successful. Microsoft has been desperate to hype Windows 7, and the OS itself just isn't an exciting product. The average computer-buying person will notice there have been a few interface changes, muddle through getting their favourite apps and files on the machine, then carry on using it as though it was still 1995.
Under the hood, the software may be vastly more sophisticated, but in terms of user interaction, not much has changed for more than a decade. And in many ways, that's what their main customers, large businesses want. They don't want to have to retrain employees, change business process, etc, etc.
So for Microsoft to get people to notice they have a new product out, they need to get some discussion going. They can't outcompete Apple in cool, and that's not their key market. They've chosen a slightly retro, awkward and geeky theme to these adverts, and trust me, the awkwardness is intentional (Remember Bill Gates and Seinfeld?).
It's not a bad marketing trick for a vast, habitually arrogant organisation to portray itself as a geeky underdog. It feels a lot less threatening that way.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Nope, its not just you. You've been infected.
Whatever you do, do not scratch out your eyeballs. While it at first seems logical after watching the video, you will forever be stuck with the images in the inky blackness of your mind. At least your eyes can distort the pain by processing other data!
What they failed to anticipate was that once they switched marketing campaigns, same-store sales declined even further.
Turns out they were competing in a tough market and marketing was not enough to increase sales, but it was helping to stem the tide. When they dumped their most popular marketing icon ever, well it was no surprise that things only got worse.
Things only got better when Taco Bell started to change their menu.
Macs though in general are a lot more uniform. If you know how to use X app, you can use Y app easily. Yeah, OS X has some oddities that if you come from Windows or from GUI Linux (if you use the shell on OS X or Linux its pretty similar) but once you get over those, they are very constant. With Windows you learn each program by themselves. Yeah, you can figure out some things, but the interfaces are totally different between even MS programs shipped on the same version of Windows.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Odd, I thought you didn't need to buy a MAC separate from your network interface - i think your friends are getting fucked with.
It breaks compatibility with a lot of ancient cruft. That's one of my biggest pluses for Win7.
The government can't save you.
I think /.'s view of what is funny has been shattered; and thusly now everything is marked informative or insightful.
I honestly believe doing a side-by-side demonstration of Windows, Mac OS, and Ubuntu, to an undecided crowd, you're just going to end up with a bunch of new fans of Mac and Windows. What features will you be comparing between the three? And does it have to be limited to features present in all three systems?
I have an awful headache, and my eyes and ears are starting to bleed.
To be honest, I didn't even make it half-way through. Being mere seconds away from death by boredom I clicked a Win7 Launch Party related video which looked much more interesting.
It was. Much.
Seriously though, I think part of the problem is my complete lack of ability to understand why anyone would have a launch party for an operating system. Yes, Windows 7 is very nice, but a launch party? Really? A launch party is for things like movies and video games. You get a group together and have fun with some brand new entertainment you all enjoy and looked forward to being released. The excitement at an OS launch party? "Ooh, look! I can get work done on my computer more efficiently now! You guys have to try this!"
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
Actually, anyone other than the staff/dev team having a "launch party" for a movie/game is only slightly less pathetic than someone having a launch party for an OS.
But as a matter of philosophy, Microsoft boldly claims "You will never need a shell" and a lot of people rejoice.
Yes, but then those of us who want a shell get... the freaking MS-DOS Command Prompt. Quite possibly the worst shell interface known to mankind. It's so bad that its suckiness has to be deliberate, Microsoft's way of "encouraging" people to think that clicking on icons is the only reasonable way to use a computer.
(yeah, I know there are alternatives. My point is that they shouldn't be "alternatives", something decent should be the default by now. It's 2009, not 1981, for God's sake)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
One thing that strikes me about my mac is that it doesn't treat me like an enormous retard. I don't have stupid little dogs popping up to "find" files for me, I don't have to click through 5 warnings about how what I'm about to do will end the world when I try to navigate out of my home directory, and the whole experience isn't dumbed down to the level of a 2 year old.
Yes, I know you can turn all that shit off in windows, but why do I have to? Every time I use a windows computer it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
People are asking, "How could Microsoft, with all its wealth and power, produce such a stupid series of ads?"
Because they're smarter than you?
--Because they have enough wealth and power to hire one of the smartest public relations firms on the planet. Waggener Edstrom is the same firm in charge of the Fox Channels. If there's any one thing they know how to do, it's identify a market and then lock down that market forever and ever and sell them whatever the hell 'truth' they feel like selling.
Here's a small clip from a page I found after about 10 seconds of Google searching. . .
Do they sound stupid now?
My guess is that they're doing three things with this ad. . .
1. They're trying to tap into a universal feeling of awkwardness that everybody feels when recalling a "PCP" party. (Parents, Chips and Pop). They're doing this because awkward, painful feelings open up memory centers. Information given during a period of high anxiety gets locked into place in the human mind. This is a well-known and often-used ploy in mind control. The information being served up in these ads is NOT how to run your software or all the features offered by their OS, but that "WINDOWS 7 EXISTS AND IT IS UBIQUITOUS AND YOU, AS A PACK ANIMAL HAD BETTER GET WITH THE PROGRAM OR RISK EXPULSION FROM THE HERD!!!!"
2. Trying to tap into the feeling of safety and love which people also feel when they think of their parents and the silly birthday parties thrown for them when they were little. Why? Because an OS is the bedrock upon which you ground your entire computer existence, --the same way your parents provided the bedrock for your adult behavior sets. You might think your parents were stupid and annoying, and you probably want to deny it, but the truth of the matter is that most people grow up to become their parents.
3. Go viral. --Using such deliberate tactics designed to rope in the lower echelon of geeks, such as stove clocks which are obviously bouncing around 'wrong' in exactly the kind of way geeks like to point out and be "Right" about. Fuck, fuck, FUCK! There's a whole sick cultural system through which people who like computer technology were warped into that "Look! I'm RIGHT!" head-space, and you had better believe that clock "error" was on purpose so as to lock them in. Low-hanging fruit.
So, please, for goodness sake, try to think outside of the bloody box when approaching the toxic waste which is advertising! If you fall for this kind of stupid shit, then you're nothing but slaves who deserve to be used and abused, and you WILL be.
Sorry for the harsh language, but this is important.
-FL
Occam's Razor suggests a simpler explanation: Vid is fucking stupid.
Table-ized A.I.
I'd say the complete opposite, when I work on a Mac, the OS assumes it knows everything I want to do and automatically sets it up that way. Woe betide me if I actually prefer doing things my way or heaven forbid, actually know what I'm doing better then the OS.
Windows and Linux on the other hand assume that I have a modicum of intelligence and present me with choices. All the annoying pop ups can be turned off. The entire UI can be replaced. The OS can be re purposed for almost anything, with Apple I have the Mac Way(TM) or the Mac Way(TM) as it assumes I'm not smart enough to make up my own mind. Windows and Linux don't hide anything from the user although Windows restricts access to one or two area's (the CSC cache) but OS X sees fit to hide most of the file system from the user.
The level of customisability of a Mac is nil, this is reflected in it's presence in the business world (or lack there of) as it's limited to the few vocations it is set up for in the first place. OS X is not set up or friendly to any kind of power user.
Odd you should bring this up as OS X decides that the entire world outside your user profile doesn't exist. Granted there are no warning when you try to access it via the GUI, in fact there is no accessing the file system using the GUI. OS X provides you with a sand box for you to play in and hides the rest, at least Windows gives you the benefit of the doubt and asks if you know what you are doing. The same goes for hidden files/folders as well.
Yes I know you can access it via the command line, but should I have to?
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I have been a Sys Admin for many years, I enjoy a lot what I do, still I find this concept so utterly repulsive that I can barely contain my disdain.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Steve Balmer. He is the target audience of this ad.
He wants Windows to be "cool" the way Macs are.
He wants a trendy viral marketing campaign. Those are all the rage these days.
He has to sign off on major marketing campaigns for the latest and greatest update to Microsoft's flagship product.
He is far enough removed from reality to think that people will buy into this crap.
His own Windows marketing shenanigans are just as absurd as this video.
This video is everything Steve Balmer wants out of a marketing campaign. The ad agency get's paid for doing what he wants, and he himself is a chair-throwing lunatic.
They lost their cool a long time ago - back when it was no longer seen to be cool to work for them,
You might blame it on Monkeyboy, but it actually started in the developer community the early '90s, when people started to realize that perpetual death marches are an indicator that the higher-ups are clueless.
Yeah, Windows sucks. Well, except that it's the only viable platform for PC gaming. And there's a plethora of software available. And the Win7 UI is nice and shiny and easy to use. And it's easy to disable the frills if you prefer performance over appearance. And it's not tied to hardware. And it's easy to develop on. And it's quite stable -- at least on par with any Mac, despite myths to the contrary. And its ubiquity all but guarantees that you'll find answers to your questions and/or support for your problems. And there's hardware drivers for pretty much any third party peripheral ever made (cause when there's not, lots and lots of people throw fits and refuse to buy Vista). And 64-bit support is not a "work in progress." And it's dead simple to find almost any codec. And NTFS is fast and robust. And it's easy to administer. And being familiar with it will unlock, by far, more job opportunities than any other OS.
But aside from that stuff, yeah.. Windows sucks and people who use it are poor and/or dumb.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere