Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

A Decade of Dreadful Microsoft Ads

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the john-hodgman-is-giggling dept.

Barence writes "PC Pro has rounded up the most howlingly awful examples of ads churned out by Microsoft over the past decade. The selection includes the cringe-worthy Gates & Seinfeld ads — where Gates looks like he’s delivering his lines with the help of a cattle prod — to the terrible Windows 7 party ads (an 'F1 key for social inadequates,' according to PC Pro), to the one that got away: an excellent in-house training video produced by The Office's Ricky Gervais."

16 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. Hurray! Propaganda! by stakovahflow · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I'm, personally, tired of the "Bash the other guy" ads.
    "I made Windoze 7 better" or "Get a Mac" crap, it doesn't matter.
    It's still crap, folks!
    I like living in a "Free Market Economy", but come on...
    Do we really want to see more of the same old crap?
    I'm a huge fan of the Miller High Life 1 second Super Bowl ad.
    (1 Second Ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYiGpVGTU2U)
    If only we could get those 1 Second ads from the rest of the world's advertisers...

    But I digress...
    Such is Life...
    --Stak

    --
    Holy happy hippy crap!
    1. Re:Hurray! Propaganda! by ari_j · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Have you stopped for, say, one second to consider how obnoxious television would be if every ad were just one second long? Some ad breaks are pushing 10 minutes now. That's 600 ads. And it would be an arms race to see who can make their ad annoying enough in that one second for you to remember it from among the other 599. It's a good idea for one advertiser to do, but a terrible idea for more than that.

      Also, advertising by its nature is going to be about what makes your product either unique or better than competing products. You can't tell people what makes your product unique or better unless you contrast it with other products. Even if you don't mention the other product, the contrast is implicit. For instance, "Macs hardly ever crash and require virtually no configuration by the user" doesn't have any meaning without context, and the assumed context is that the listener has used Windows and had a blue screen or two and got lost in configuration screens. I'm sure you'd complain about implicit comparison ads like that, just as you do about the explicit comparisons.

      It's not about bashing the other guy. It's about communicating to your audience what it is that makes your product their best choice in a way that they will remember. The "I'm a Mac / and I'm a PC" ads are effective at that. The Gates/Seinfeld ads are good for the latter but I don't think they communicated anything about the product. Microsoft could have learned from the dot-com era Superbowl ads to have avoided that mistake.

      It's possible to find an ad that is effective without making any explicit or implicit comparisons to other products. The "Make 7-Up Yours" ads did that just fine, as do many food ads because the market is swamped with different products and you can't say yours is better than each of the others and state reasons for that conclusion, but you can remind people of your product enough to make their mouth water for a taste. But, for products where there is a limited number of competitors and you have objective reasons to say why yours is better than any of theirs, a comparison comes up in every effective ad.

  2. And the Linux ads? by johnsie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They were pretty bad too... The commercial with the little kid being brainwashed by Linux fanboys? The Obvious advertisng winners of the 00's were clearly Apple. They got the memorable TV ads and also got the word of mouth thing right. Linux and Micrsoft were the epic failures of the last decade, more so toward the end of the decade.

    1. Re:And the Linux ads? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      They were pretty bad too... The commercial with the little kid being brainwashed by Linux fanboys?

      The Obvious advertisng winners of the 00's were clearly Apple. They got the memorable TV ads and also got the word of mouth thing right. Linux and Micrsoft were the epic failures of the last decade, more so toward the end of the decade.

      Apple may have gotten on everyone's mind with their offensive "Mac vs. PC" Ads, but that same Ad campaign ensured that I personally will never buy another Apple product, not even an iPod or iPhone.

  3. Re:I Really Liked the Seinfeld Ads by gregarican · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I don't know why everybody hates them.

    Most people think they are _somewhat_ funny. The everybody you are referring to are the Microsoft haters who wouldn't admit they like any Microsoft ads...

  4. Re:Microsoft's Most Effective Ads by alen · · Score: 2, Insightful

    a lot of it is perception

    apps like Google desktop became popular so MS put the functionality in Vista. when the crap that is Google desktop slows down your PC it's OK because it's cool when Google organizes your data. when the MS indexing service did it in Vista it was crap because it was Microsoft.

    same thing with Apple. when people got viruses pirating some Mac software it was their fault since p2p is dangerous. when people do the same thing on Windows it means MS sucks

    i'll probably get a Mac next year just so i can teach my son Unix and reading the Mac forums. Apple has had quality issues lately and a lot of the old time Mac fanboys are noticing and complaining so the cool Apple perception is in danger.

  5. The Apple Ads Are Bad In Their Own Way by Petersko · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sure, Microsoft has made some terrible ads. And when the get a good one they follow it up with a bad one. The "I'm a PC and I'm 4 and a half" ad was pretty good. The same girl doing the "happy words" ad was terrible.

    Lots of people like the Apple "I'm a Mac" ads but I find them to be terrible for a different reason. I think elevating your product relative to your competitor by calling them down directly is mean-spirited and low.

    To me those ads make Apple seem slimy. They are what you get when you take an American political attack ad, throw in some whimsy, and add a generous helping of conceited snobbery.

    1. Re:The Apple Ads Are Bad In Their Own Way by diamondsw · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The whole point of those ads is to point out the flaws in Windows that people take for granted, and say "it doesn't have to be that way".

      --
      I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
    2. Re:The Apple Ads Are Bad In Their Own Way by jellomizer · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That is the point they are supposed to identify with PC. Then you see how he is suffering but doesn't realize it. But you being the outside person may realize that you are suffering.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  6. Re:Microsoft succeeds because of "Marketing" by cyber-vandal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As long as Linux can't run the majority of the required software and devices it won't matter how good or bad its marketing is.

  7. Re:Gates and Seinfeld? by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I must be the only guy in the world that actually thought those were kinda funny.

    If you pay millions of dollars to hire the guy behind what is often hailed as the best situation comedy in the history of TV, then people will expect that the result to be more than just "kinda funny".

    If they had done these ads with some unknown comic, then the expectations bar would have been much lower, and the ads might have worked for what they were.

  8. It's OK when it's You by SuperKendall · · Score: 2, Insightful

    apps like Google desktop became popular so MS put the functionality in Vista. when the crap that is Google desktop slows down your PC it's OK because it's cool when Google organizes your data.

    No, it was OK because I chose to install Google Desktop, or not. Indexing came enabled by default by Vista, I didn't chose to have it so much as I had to go out of the way to not have it. Yes it's simple to disable but the ease of that does not enter in the equation.

    What is not, and has not ever, been OK is to have a system default that everyone gets that sucks at some fundamental level.

    That's also why the Mac is still better security wise, because all of the defaults (no ports open, require password for all admin actions) and the way they are implemented are reasonable for most people.

    same thing with Apple. when people got viruses pirating some Mac software it was their fault since p2p is dangerous. when people do the same thing on Windows it means MS sucks

    No, when you pirated ONE app on a Mac you got a TROJAN. If you just plugged some WIndows systems into the internet, you got a VIRUS. And although there are exploits, to date you will not get a VIRUS on a Mac just by browsing, where that is still a real possibility on a PC.

    Furthermore, on a Mac if you install a TROJAN all it can really do is mess with your files unless you also give it an admin password. Because Vista UAC was a little too aggressive, they blew some holes in the model and now if you install a TROJAN on Windows7 you may also get some of your system infected too.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  9. It's Protection! Like a Condom by mpapet · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I set it up the first thing that pisses me off is typing in the admin password every time i install something.
    And you prefer the way Microsoft does it because you.... like.... applications installed and running without your knowing? Or you are employed by an antivirus provider or something?

    the way the Mac fanboys made it seem is that apple magically protected its OS without me having to do anything

    UAC is not Unix-like. UAC is a wrapper around the same horrible implementation of Microsoft's security scheme. So, there is still silent escalation among other things not yet understood. Let this moment stand as the first time UAC is compared to a condom that leaks.

    So, yes, there is protection. Just like a condom. You have to type in your password to take the condom off. Otherwise, you are free to use the Internets with no fears commonly associated with Microsoft's STD's.

    --
    http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
  10. Re:The Decade of Microsoft by diamondsw · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No, it really wasn't, because the 90's were when Microsoft's dominance was on the upswing and they seemed invincible. (Windows 3.1, 95, NT4, Office 95, IE, etc). Now they're slipping on many fronts (Windows Vista, IE marketshare, Office 11, Silverlight, WMP/WMV/Zune, etc). They haven't lost yet, but only because they have so far to fall.

    Seriously, the only bright spots for Microsoft this decade where they've improved over last are the Windows Server line and the XBox.

    --
    I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
  11. Re:MS's in-house/expo shorts consistently excellen by DannyO152 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If Apple's execs were pissed, they were pissed all the way to the bank because Apple had unit sales growth during the laptop hunters run.

    Meanwhile, the pc makers showed declines except in the netbook sector. Microsoft's gross revenues take a hit when a netbook is bought as opposed to a laptop. (Not that every netbook sold is a laptop not sold, but Microsoft, in order to fight off the Linux threat in the netbook market, discounted OEM Windows heavily and I wouldn't be surprised if, to break even, Microsoft needed 3 OEM netbook sales to offset an OEM laptop not sold, prior to Win7's release.)

    Plus, what was the one common element in all commercials? The glance at and dismissal of the Macs as more expensive. This is not news. Go back and check the Apple/Windows flamewars and you'll note the cost point is conceded and the arguments are whether the differential is overstated and whether the higher cost makes sense because of a higher value. An ad which shows someone making a decision primarily on cost does not really help Microsoft's partners sell their premium high-profit systems. And, in retrospect, it didn't deter enough people from buying a Mac. In a deep recession.

    Now I suppose it gave the Windows polemicists plenty of chances to go "neener, neener" as the Apple fanbois and the advertising theoreticians - like me, though I do use and like my Macs - would explain why we thought the ads were not that good, and perhaps that counts as effective. Sure why not? And when did Microsoft have its worst quarter in history?

  12. Re:It's Protection! Like a Condom by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And you prefer the way Microsoft does it because you.... like.... applications installed and running without your knowing? Or you are employed by an antivirus provider or something?

    Did you miss the part where he had UAC turned-on in Windows?

    He's complaining that at least UAC is a simple "yes/no" permission grant, where Apple's mechanism requires you type your password. (At least that's how I read it.)

    UAC is not Unix-like.

    Yeah; for one thing it can automatically determine when a app needs elevation instead of Unix-like method of the app shitting all over itself, then you know to re-run it with elevation only after it fails. From my perspective, UAC is better than Unix-like implementations.

    UAC is a wrapper around the same horrible implementation of Microsoft's security scheme.

    How is it horrible? You can assign much finer-grained security permissions to many more objects than in Unix-like OSes. So, again, from my perspective, Microsoft's security scheme is significantly better than Unix-like implementations.

    So, there is still silent escalation among other things not yet understood.

    If you don't understand it, maybe you should figure it out instead of just implying that *everybody* is as ignorant as you.

    There is no silent escalation-- you have to prove claims like that, you can't just write your train-of-thought directly to the screen.

    So, yes, there is protection. Just like a condom. You have to type in your password to take the condom off.

    If you like typing a password, you can easily set UAC to require one also. In which case, there's absolutely *no* difference whatsoever between Apple and Microsoft's implementation-- oh, except to raving fanboys like you, the Apple one is "good" and the Microsoft one is "bad".

    --
    Comment of the year