Microsoft’s Laptop Hunters jump the shark
American TV viewers are used to summer being the season of re-runs. Unfortunately that seems to be the attitude of Microsoft’s creative team, which has returned with a ‘fresh’ installment of the Laptop Hunters campaign.
The company had been on something of a marketing roll recently with a big-money push for the Bing search engine appearing to lead to a rapid growth in awareness of, and positive attitudes to, the brand. It followed this up with a “controversial”commercial for Internet Explorer 8’s private browsing feature which ended in some copious vomiting. Though Microsoft quickly pulled the ad, it’s hard to believe it didn’t fully expect a hostile reaction and calculate that the resulting publicity was just as valuable as the advert itself.
Now though, the firm has fallen back to the Laptop Hunters campaign. When it launched, the series of ads were genuinely a fresh idea. They may have been somewhat misleading, but it was genuinely eye-catching to see Microsoft finally fight back and directly attack Apple’s weaknesses.
But unless you create characters or scenarios which genuinely capture the public imagination and become part of the culture, there’s only so long an ad campaign can run unless you use it to make new points.
That’s not the case in the latest ad, which is pretty much a remake of the original. In the debut episode, a woman with a $1,000 budget rejected Apple’s entry level $999 laptop (mocking its fashionable status) and went for an HP machine costing $700. In the new episode, a couple start with a $700 budget and opt for the same HP machine.
Not only does this fail to add any new information to the campaign, but it’s pretty much meaningless. The original ad gave the message that Apple wasn’t worth the extra cash. In this installment the whole question of features, performance, durability and software support becomes completely irrelevant.
If you’re going to do comparative marketing, then “PCs are better than Macs” is fine, and “PCs are better value than Macs” might be even better. But once the campaign is reduced to effectively saying “PCs are all you can afford”, it’s time for a reboot.
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July 10th, 2009
“The company had been on something of a marketing roll recently with [...] a rapid growth in awareness of, and positive attitudes to [sic], the brand.”
“Brand awareness” and “positive attitudes” may be how marketing types justify their salaries, but I bet the shareholders would nominate a “marketing roll” as one that actually leads to an increase in *market share*. (In fact, that’s probably why it’s called “marketing”, don’t you think?)
“When [the series of ads] launched [...]”
The series of ads didn’t “launch” anything, it *was launched*. You are English (and supposedly a writer); surely you are familiar with the word “was” from your time as a schoolboy?
July 10th, 2009
The message remains you can have more choices and spend less money if you don’t buy a Mac.
Now go rerun the all The Mac/PC Apple ads from the last few months and tell us how many didn’t say, “Crash”, “Freeze up” and “Virus” in them. Go ahead, I’ll wait………. err John are you there? Coming back John?
What’s funny is the angst this campaign causes. It’s never about if the message is incorrect, it descends into a message only blackbelt MacUsers see. “We can only afford crap” is not what made the campaign work.
July 10th, 2009
Are you saying OSX can’t crash, freeze up or get a virus?
Or isn’t hackable?
Some people are so naive. No wonder apple gets away with charging people so much.
Idiot
July 10th, 2009
@ncaissie, Who are you commenting on?
Cause if it’s me you need to work on reading comprehension.