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Microsoft’s New Ads Play Personality Politics

by Josh Kahn | September 26, 2008 at 4:17 PM
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This post is a little off the regular political beat, but it’s an interesting example of political style culture messaging seeping into a commercial ad campaign.  Everyone’s seen the famous Mac vs. PC ads over the last few years, but Microsoft has recently begun a massive ad campaign to play off of Mac’s branding:

This spot and the two others in the campaign follow the classic testimonial political ad format. In this formula, the campaign gives specific demographics of voters permission to support their candidate by showing a real person from the target group. Microsoft’s trying the same thing although the people in the ads aren't exactly “man on the street.”

Microsoft is also taking advantage of some of the same cultural gaps political advertising frequently focus on.  According to a commercial ad exec with his name on one of the country’s larger independent ad firms who I emailed about the campaign:
It’s branding Microsoft as less the cold juggernaut and more like a warm fuzzy product.

Appple is cool. Target is cool.

Microsoft wants to be walmart. For the people. Regular joe types.
Not techy.

By that standard, these ads fail badly. The whole point of a testimonial ad is using people who feel similar to the target demographic – and virtually no one in these ads in normal. Cool? Sure. But Microsoft shouldn’t be aping the douche bag bike messenger in the Mac ads, they should be jujitsuing him.   
 
Or as the ad exec put it:
No I don’t like the MS spots.
Confusing
Weird
No strategy
Gates looks fat

 

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Comments

They should've sent Miss Cleo.

Submitted by RedMango on Fri, 09/26/2008 - 16:28.

 The appearance of Deepak Chopra near the end made the commercial a complete joke.  And I was liking until that moron popped up.  

I like the ads

Submitted by nlj on Sun, 09/28/2008 - 01:29.

As a pc user who has loved using Vista, I like the ads. I like seeing people who are out there doing things they're passionate about using pc's. It makes the Apple ads look like a schoolyard popularity contest.

And lately, more people are willing to admit they like pc's without getting pummeled with attempts at humiliation by the Apple fan club. it's a welcome change.

I'm not anti-apple. I have an iphone. my husband and kids use macs. but apple, it would be nice if they wouldn't make fun of me for using a mac!