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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."
I see everyone else is catatonic from watching the video.
Come on, this video is complex, challenging art.
Have Leo Laporte and the TWiT's had their Windows 7 party yet?
He said that they were signing up (2 weeks ago?) and would receive among other things: Windows 7 themed balloons, napkins and cups.
Wow, Microsoft.... Just, wow...
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
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
I wonder why...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
White Guy: "Of course the first thing you're going to do is install Windows 7." Group: *Laughs* (Like we're going to do that.)
I like how they disabled comments on the video.
Because, of course, the video's obvious coolness needed no acknowledgment from the viewers.
I can see the fnords!
Heard it on All Things Considered on the way home tonight. They played a clip from the "how to give a party" video. There were several comments about how MS's marketing dept had missed the target again.
I remember for the Heinz Ketchup creativity contest they had recently there were a bunch of videos they kept removing despite them getting a lot of votes. Like this one that showed a wicked old lady chugging ketchup and then at the end she holds the bottle up and smiles and has this awesome snaggletooth grin with missing teeth.
So Microsoft will have to put with questionable content and I'll be there to vote it up and love it. Example:
*man sits behind TV set with only shoulders and head visible and upper arm working vigorously while expressions of joy cross his face*
Narrator: So there I was watching some kitten snuff films before my friends arrived for the Win7 Launch party.
*doorbell rings, narrator gets up to open door behind which are three guys with sunglasses on and a white powder visibly smeared across their upper lips*
Narrator: Guys, what's the deal, where are the hookers?
Christian Slater Sounding Partier: Yeah, Fred, about that, we had a little accident. One of the hookers got a bit lippy and they're not gonna make it.
Narrator: They're coming later?
Christian Slater Sounding Partier: Just make sure you don't leave any fingerprints on your dumpster if you go there tonight.
Narrator: Awesome, well, you all brought your stolen laptops so let's fire 'em up and start doing something better than snorting coke and killing hookers: installing Win7.
Remember, it's not just the comments that are impressively stupid on YouTube. There's also videos. Opening up your company to a video contest? Yeah, I'll be searching YouTube for "Win7 Launch Party REJECTED."
My work here is dung.
...are not generating any free press for Microsoft.
I have seriously thrown up and lost 10 pounds of food from my intestines including water. You too can achieve rapid weight loss.
Microsoft has been making crappy promotional videos for years and years.
Take a look at this MS-DOS 5 video promotion, YO MS Raps!
Ballmer tries to sell Windows 1.0
This is the Windows 386 launch video with the crazy female office worker turning from Mission Impossible later on into a punk rock and Madona combo?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
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.
I could not get through even 30 seconds of it and I am in shame for that. I would rather light my ball hairs on fire and have a bondage trans sexual primordial dwarf beat the fire out with a sledge hammer than have to watch another second of that bowel evacuating drivel! The camera work sucks too. Mike
It wasn't until I was 1/2 way through the video where it dawned on me that they were discussing throwing a party to introduce their friends to all the cool new things that Windows 7 can offer.
Either Microsoft is planning on selling Windows 7 like tuppaware or what I just watched was the introduction to a very bad porno.
Come on, this video is complex, challenging art.
I was hoping to see a bunch of anal sex with the caption being, "Hey, you got it up the ass with Vista be prepared for Windows 7!"
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
I wonder why...
My guess is that they were originally enabled, but Google didn't have the bandwidth to process the torrent of 0.0 votes.
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.
I wonder why, they were ashamed of it as soon as they posted it.
I actually watched the whole thing... you guys didn't, so you didn't see the older lady and the oldest lady erupt into passionate lesbian sex. The dudes pulled out weapons and began close-quarters combat. The video ended with the Mac guy emerging from stage right and saying "pwn3d".
Blue-Balls of Death, eh?
Table-ized A.I.
This thing is so vomit-inducing that everyone is talking about it and many who would not have watched the video actually did. As a case of viral marketing, I'd say it is brilliant. Few viruses can make you puke just by looking at them.
Hell, *I* hate Tux the Penguin. Nothing screams Dork in a College Dorm Room louder than Tux. (OK, maybe a Middle Earth poster...) But the goofy little guy endures, so he must be reaching somebody in the target audience who's not me and the pundits. Maybe this Win7 ad reaches the same key demographic.
Of course, the preceding argument presumes that Linux has some kind of unified and organized marketing program. Which is, y'know, ridiculous...
Wow...it took them over 3hrs to film that short 6 minute PSA. Not only was it horrible, but the actors involved didn't even believe what they were pitching.
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.
Who are they marketing to?
No, if Apple had done this, it would still have sucked. It would take more than "genius" to make this pitch work, it would take "omnipotence." In fact, if the marketers at Apple really are geniuses, I would expect them never ever to try a campaign as hokey as this.
If anything, Apple sells only the style and solidity of the hardware and the utility of the software, and downplays the operating system because it exists only as a facilitator to the other things you want to do with the computer. It really is a case where you want to sell the sizzle instead of the steak, because the steak is boring.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Windows 7 themed jello shots, strippers and potato cannons.
You can thank me later.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The start me up campaign was pretty good if I remember.
Get AC/DC or something. Something Thunderstruck or Back in Black.
Then go hire a music video guy to do some funky video where everyone's face turns into a window.
Why is this so hard?
Microsoft is the new Tupperware?
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!
http://xkcd.com/51/
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.
Fortunately I don't have to use it. I have Debian.
This is the part where you hop on your motorcycle and wheelie the f out of there, right? RIGHT!?!?
+1 Disagree
It's so terrible, I feel compelled to send it to everyone I know so they can see its glory. Well played, Microsoft.. Well played. -_-
Have strippers, a keg, taking sledgehammers to Windows machines, you get the idea.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
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
It's the new episode from Brannon Braga!
http://www.hulu.com/watch/97929/flashforward-no-more-good-days
"For 2 minutes and seventeen seconds, we all blacked out..." ... in the future!"
"We didn't black out sir, we were
"What did you see?"
"It was too horrible to talk about."
"Come on honey... What was it?"
"I was STILL at the release party!"
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Here is an improved version of the commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imd1_39pLAM
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.
Microsoft is the new Tupperware?
Tupperware: Hard to open and full of food that was new a long time ago.
Windows: Slow to open and full of stuff that was new a long time ago (on Macs).
So pretty much true, exept without the freshness.
This sig is false.
People who aren't cool enough for a Mac. Haven't you seen laptop hunters?
In fact, they're marketing to people who have enormous chips on their shoulders about being so entirely uncool (or poor) for Macs.
I jest. They're talking to themselves. Microsoft's insecurities have been laid utterly bare in all their marketing attempts for a decade.
There was a joint interview with Jobs and Gates not too long ago that I'm too lazy to dig up, and a question was asked "what do you envy about the other" -- Gates' answer came off as snide, yet honest: "I wish I had your taste"
They've been at this since the Zune came out and they started marketing to the Wal-Mart demographic. Because Wal-Mart folks like brown things that work almost sorta as well as an iPod at the same price. Because you're not cool enough for an iPod, and you've got a chip on your shoulder about it.
The weird part is... that demographic's pretty much stuck with MS out of ignorance, and MS is tilting at windmills whenever they go against apple. They inevitably end up looking as insane (and sad) as Don Quixote himself.
They're trying so hard to astroturf these days, build a viral movement. I'm not sure they understand that apart from a handful of lunatics/idiots/middle managers out there, there is nobody on earth who actually likes Microsoft. Maybe they do understand, and they're trying to overcompensate?
Their messaging isn't helping any.
So, as a career advertising guy (15 years & counting) I don't get it either.
Round about Vista/Zune, MS and their various agencies of record starting shooting themselves in the foot. I'm here to tell you Crispin/Porter is a great, kooky agency... but they just can't speak to the Wal-Mart moms that MS thinks they're in danger of losing.
Microsoft's achilles heels are Office (in the near term) and Mobile (in the long term). If they lose control over file formats and Exchange lock-in, Microsoft as we know it gets pushed over their tipping point. Over the long term, so many of our common tasks will be moving to mobiles or embedded devices instead of PCs -- and MS let Mobile languish as a steaming pile for the better part of a decade.
But now they're just shitting out me-too copies of consumer electronics.
Maybe the whole thing is misdirection? I don't think so, but there has to be a few smart folks at that company who can see the forest for the trees.
Apologies in advance to David Letterman:
* Pin the tail on the Ballmer
* Simon says "UAC needs your permission to continue"
* Monopoly
* Your files in a haystack
* Twenty clippy questions
* Musical thrown chairs
* Darl McBride pinata
* Red Light, Green Light, Blue Screen
* DRM may I?
* Phone Home Scruples
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
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
Ie. what I want to do is simply mv */*xml . Very basic stuff.
Being an ignorant *nix geek, I find this a difficult task to achieve using the GUI, so I try the MS-DOS shell, I still can't work it out, move being somewhat different to mv. And I freely admit it might be my fabled geek ignorance of Windows at work, so if anyone can give me the DOS cmd that does this ...
for /d %i in (*) do move %i\*.xml .
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
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.