Apple has begun airing three new “Get a Mac” ads on U.S. network and cable television.
In “Pizza Box,” PC stoops to disguising himself as a pizza to get college students to even look his way.
Apple “Get a Mac” ad: Pizza Box
In “Throne,” PC sits atop his throne, but Mac puts a damper on his fun.
Apple “Get a Mac” ad: Throne
In “Calming Teas,” Windows PC offers user “calming teas” to deal with the mess that is Windows Vista.
Apple “Get a Mac” ad: Calming Teas
See the ads in various sizes and qualities via Apple.com here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “GizmoDan” for the heads up.]
Putting the crash time tea in a blue box was just genius.
@sarasota
As well as the morning Raspberry Restart, absolutely inspired.
Free pizza.
An ad can only be as good as the product it is advertising.
If the product is poor but is being hyped by the ad eg Vista, then the ad will be worse than the product because the outstanding feature in most people’s mind will be that they felt utterly let doen after having their expectations raised to an all time high.
How may business’ waited for Vista in order to upgrade?
How many business’ cursed upon finding that their peripherals were not going to work with Vista?
How many business’ gave up the idea of upgrading all their peripherals becuase Vista was too good to let go?
How many IT guys supported their bosses by asking for XP to be installed in what was their Vista machines?
Moral of the story:- If the product exceeds your expectation, any ad about the product will be a good one.
If the product sucks, no amount of advertising will convince you that the product a Zune isn’t a turd and that is giving a turd a bad name!
That pizza box is, indeed, much better designed than usual PCs…
Zek,
I am sure it is a european thing. Apple has no need to brag about it’s virtues. It is enough (and more humble) to say that, compared to your competitors, your products don’t suck.
“I don’t think I have ever seen Mac clean shaven before.”
He is starting to go corporate.
“Maybe it’s a european thing, but it seems a bit crappy, slagging off the opposition.”
Yeah, it’s definitely a European thing. The Europeans and Japanese don’t like the ads all that much. Some even hate the ads. They don’t like the direct comparisons, think it’s uncouth.
On the other hand, the machines are selling better than ever. And the ads are iconic. So I’d be reluctant to change anything.
Comment from: madgunde
“These ads are great. Well, the pizza and throne ones are, the tea ad was a bit lame.”
You got this completely backwards. The tea one is the only one I even smiled at.
“You are BANISHED!” … best line yet.
Not funny. Switching? Never.
Your potential. Our passion.™
Banished is Great… Funny Shite…
Anyone notice that YouTube video previews now show up on web pages on the iPhone? And when you click on the preview it plays it in the iPhone YouTube player, then goes back to the web page… Maybe that was added with the 2.0 software update but it’s awesome regardless.
I guess subtlety doesn’t translate so well to Europeans.
Mac does not criticise, critique or otherwise insult PC. If you notice, they are friends! In fact, Mac is generally sympathetic to PC. Also, Mac does not brag about his qualities. Generally, it’s PC who mentions the things Mac is good at. The only time Mac says things like he gets no viruses is if PC asks him.
PC is a sympathetic character, we empathize with him. In fact, the vast majority of those watching will like the PC character far more than the Mac character.
Now, the people who see the ads, as I’ve outlined above, are those whom Apple are targeting as potential switchers. The people who see Mac as attacking PC, mostly teenage gamers, are not Apple’s target audience. Whether europeans can pick up sympathy, empathy, humor, irony, sarcasm in the American-based ads, I can’t tell. Perhaps, they’ll have to tailor the ads to each culture. An interesting question for the sociologists.
@ Anonymous©
It’s not just the ads, but so much more that needs to be considered in other cultures. Remember the Chevy Nova? It didn’t sell at all in Mexico — GM took a long time figuring out “No va.”
I hadn’t noticed the long version of “Sad Song” before (on the Apple site). Hilarious!
I use a PC (I’m a gamer; my wife uses a Mac) and I think the adds are funny as hell. I am a potential switcher, at this point. To sell me, Mac just needs to have more games (especially MMOs) run native to its system.
Im a mac lover but these ads are getting old and played out
I hope you make the leap. I know so many people who switched.
Even my own Mac loathing PC head brother did. Used Hackintosh for a long time, then got himself an iMac.
Why not just use your PC for games and Mac for everything else? The PC is good for something.
How ’bout some ads showing how well the Mac works instead of ragging on the competition?
The objective of the campaing switched progressively :
– 1st Phase : point weaknesses solved by Mac OS
– 2nd Phase (actual phase) : everybody nows Macs are easier, simpler, cleaner…
–> The new objective is to tell people they are ridicoulous buying PC. So in actual and comming ads, PC will be more and more presented in ridiculous situation that nobody want to be identified with.
Why would anyone want to see the worse-than-VHS quality of YouTube instead of seeing the ads on Apple’s site?
Sorry “madgunde”
I thought the tea ad was the funniest one.
The throne ad is the most important ad as it get the point across that Windows users can bring their old PC in and Apple will transfer their data to their new mac for them for free!
If Apple has the people to do that, then they should run the #&%@ out of that ad!
@Thisson
For your next computer, get a hi-end mac with a good graphics card and put windows on it. That way you have ONE computer to run your Windows-only games AND all the other stuff!
You will still need to get a virus program or two for the Windows side.
“Remember the Chevy Nova? It didn’t sell at all in Mexico — GM took a long time figuring out ‘No va.'”
Urban myth.
http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp