Slashdot Mirror
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.
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 wonder why...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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.
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
Hey, now. 7 runs much more smoothly than Vista - they used lube this time.
Blue-Balls of Death, eh?
Table-ized A.I.
Excellent point. Because, after all, Microsoft has such a hard time generating free press. What they really need now is to get their name out there no matter what connotation is involved with it. Once that happens, THEN they can worry about image.
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?
It got attention. Isn't that the point of marketing?
Not entirely. Take the Taco Bell Dog as an example. From Snopes:
In July 2000 fast food giant Taco Bell (a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc.) did the ostensibly unthinkable: it abruptly ended what appeared to be a highly successful ad campaign that had worked to establish this memorable brand identity. Seemingly out of the blue, the corporation announced it would no longer feature the wise-cracking Chihuahua in its ads. Though the Taco Bell dog might make cameo appearances in subsequent commercials, he was being retired as company spokespooch.
The reason behind the move was simple enough: the dog, though beloved of consumers, wasn't working magic on the company's bottom line. Though Taco Bell had succeeded in creating a cultural icon, the resultant symbol wasn't inspiring a great enough segment of the fast food-buying public to make a run for the border. Same-store sales were down 6 percent in the second quarter of 2000, a result the company could only regard as alarming and a certain sign that changes had to be made.
So while Microsoft's marketing may bring smiles to churro vendors everywhere, it doesn't mean the attention is really getting anything for Microsoft.
http://xkcd.com/51/
Not even. Essentially what they are doing is kickstarting a quality viral campaign. Snigger all you want at the ad, that's what they want you do do. They produce ads that are so embarrassing that the message is really clear: "oh, did you see the lame ad, these guys should stick to doing what they do best, which is programming. Win 7 is actually quite good you know."
The implied contrast is: "Apple is all about good marketing."
Let's face it: we geeks all do the same thing. When you show up with your dirty beard, beer gut, suspenders, blackened coffee mug, you are telling the world "everyone values my competence so much that I don't need to sell myself via superficial means."
Same with Zunes and squirting and all that.
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