Microsoft is really taking the gloves off this time. ZDNet is reporting that it will spend $500 million to make a powerful statement to its hundreds of millions of customers,” Saul Hansell reports for The New York Times. “I imagine the statement would have to go something like this:”
Windows Vista isn’t really as bad as they say. Honest. Please don’t be mad at us. We promise our next operating system will be better. Pinky swear.
Hansell writes, “Those aren’t exactly the words they use, but it is certainly the tone of the ad that Microsoft has started running on its site… It shows a painting of a tall ship with the headline ‘At one point everyone thought the Earth was flat. Get the facts about Windows Vista.'”
Hansell writes, “[What] a dreadful place for Microsoft to be. It is fighting Google on one side and Apple on the other… Even if you are a big fan of Microsoft, consider which you would rather read about first: a something new from Google, Apple or Microsoft?”
“After spending $500 million, Microsoft might be able to convince people that Windows Vista is not awful,” Hansell writes. “But just because you can show the earth is not flat, doesn’t mean you will rule the new world.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Davis Machead” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Windows. It is your father’s OS.
http://www.zunescene.mobi/forums/index.php?topic=39738.0
Everyone leaving the mothership……..
Half a billion on publicity? How about, you know, FIXING the product if they want to improve its reputation?
-jcr
Wouldn’t it be funny (and sad) if the ad budget balloned from $500 million to say $800 million? Do you think they might need a billion?
But wouldn’t that money be better spent actually improving the product?
Crap. I meant ballooned.
… the Earth isn’t flat; it’s Microsoft that is flat…(Ballmer: “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up”)
I hope I’m not the only one who finds the whole “everyone thought the Earth was flat” extremely insulting on several levels.
Not a good way to advertise— insulting your customers.
After all — the people who would actually even be looking up information about Vista are usually way more educated than your average Joe consumer. Sadly many of them don’t know any better– but at least they know XP, while crappy, is still better than Vista.
Wow, $500 million. And yet the pinky swear means more to me than the money. Unless they send it directly to ME.
It makes you wonder how they’ll explain away Windows 7, whenever it rolls around.
“Don’t like Vista? Hang around a decade and we’ll give you the new Windows 7 – or should we say the ol’faithful, as in Windows 3.1? That’s right, Vista’s next step will be a blast from the past! Party on dudes! Microsoft rocks!”
Ever notice how PR campaigns using the phrase “get the facts”, are usually propaganda campaigns designed to hide or deny the facts everybody already knows?
Remember Microsoft’s “get the facts” campaign against Linux? That one turned out well, didn’t it?
The flattest thing about Microsoft is their product sales.
BOTTM LINE… ONCE A TERD…ALWAYS A TURD!
GIVE IT UP, CLOSE UP THE SHOP AND REFUND THE STOCKHOLDER… IF THERE ANY LEFT!
Vista goes well with the Zune, they should leave it alone.
Not a good way to advertise— insulting your customers.
Not to mention the fact that its pretty well documented that people haven’t really believed the world was flat for the thick end of around 2400 years and was pretty much validated around the time the Ancient Greeks were truly getting their shit together on the whole maths thing.
And let’s not mention that the astrolabe, which pretty much operates on the basis of a spherical world, has existed since well before Columbus.
In fact, the whole “flat earth” thing is a meme originating from Washington Irving.
So, an advertising campaign based on a myth that people used to be really stooooopid and the (patronising and insulting) inference that people are still really stoooopid.