Re: TV Commercial Ideas
Re: TV Commercial Ideas
- Subject: Re: TV Commercial Ideas
- From: John Linthicum <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 09:33:49 -0400
I like that Apple is doing a lot of "brand" marketing, and not a pissing
contest. I nearly cringe when Phil gets up on stage and does the Windows vs.
Mac deal with Photoshop. Don't be mislead. Macs rule in content creation.
These demos on stage are very optimized so that the Mac simply blows away
the PC, and very targeted toward something the Mac does so "obviously"
better than the PC. If the demo was of a huge Excel spreadsheet
recalculating and then updating a graph and flowing over into some
PowerPoint preso, the results might be a little more fair. But that's not
effective targeting.
Someone pointed out the other day that a great number of people don't even
*consider* a Mac when buying a computer. That's where brand awareness comes
in. Apple has one of the most recognizable brands in the world, right up
there with Coke-A-Cola and has for quite some time. They get more bang for
the buck advertising this way. If they got into a contest of replacing a PCI
card, Gateway or someone else would invent a slip in PCI card that you don't
even have to open the case to install with the drivers in ROM on the card
that install themselves. It's not that Gateway (or Dell, or whomever) is
full of innovators, it's that when they are all essentially the same, it's
the tiny featurettes that set them apart, and they have to have a story to
tell. I mean, a female cow a male voice saying "What computers?" watching
sexy dancers film a music-video-type commercial, and Stephen "Dude, you're
getting a ..." That's all branding. It's really all they've got. BUT, it is
effective advertising.
Apple has a unique position where I believe they have to hit 2 different
markets with their advertising. The buyer who may or may not know about
Macintosh, but has used a PC before, and is relating to the stories of the
real people telling their experiences. That's creating top-of-mind brand
awareness in that segment. Second, they have to appeal to the faithful.
Those who have purchased Macs for years, and need to be compelled to upgrade
their existing hardware to get the full experience of OS X. They are
motivated relating to the real people stories about their "horrid little
machines" because it's preaching to the choir, validating what they've been
saying for generations of computers. So Apple is hitting 2 birds with one
stone. While some of these are getting a little old to most of us already, I
think its important for Apple to take this campaign long term, not just
encouraging people to switch, but showing them how easy that would be. When
the guy says his Mac opens all his old documents "flawlessly," there should
be a screen shot of Word opening one, and so on.
It's a shame you won't be at UGU this July. Do whatever you have to do to be
at the next one.
John Linthicum
--
Vice President & Apple Ambassador
XMUG, A Macintosh User Group
Richmond, VA USA
http://www.xmug.org/ (a site in transition)
In reply to Randolph Marshall of email@hidden on 6/26/02 12:38
AM:
>
Back in 1995 after a club meeting in Charlotte we had one of our "round
>
table discussions" about Apple and advertising. One of our members
>
suggested that Apple should do a side by side time lapse commercial of a Mac
>
being networked side by side with the same thing being done on the windows
>
system.
>
>
Mac Legend has it that Guy Kawasaki did this original side by side
>
comparison using a teenager to get the systems networked.
>
>
It might be a good idea to revive this idea and also apply it to other
>
things:
>
>
How about side by side comparison of a Mac running windows in VPC and then
>
showing it running the Mac OS as well...
>
>
How about a side by side comparison of an install on the Mac vs. the install
>
on a Windows machine and show how long it takes...
>
>
How about a side by side comparison of installing a SCSI card and how long
>
that takes...
>
>
Just a couple of thoughts. Do you have any suggestions for more effective
>
Apple commercials?
>
>
My best,
>
Randy Marshall
>
Pres., CarolinaMUG.com
>
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