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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.
...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.
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.
Here you are talking about Windows 7.
No, we're making fun of the video and the asshats in Microsoft Marketing. No one is talking about the OS at all. This could make it so unhip to use it that Apple gains significant market share regardless of the merits of the new system.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
It breaks compatibility with a lot of ancient cruft. That's one of my biggest pluses for Win7.
The government can't save you.
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
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.