After a $500 million “Wow Starts Now” campaign completely bombed Microsoft went awfully quiet and let the public, the tech community and Apple noisily tear Vista to pieces.
Understandably of course, there where a lot of serious issues with Vista’s release, nothing we hadn’t seen before, but issues nonetheless. It’s safe to say that 2 years later these issues have been resolved and as Tim Anderson declared:
“Vista is now actually better than its reputation. That’s a marketing issue.”
Thanks to the infamous, largely inaccurate yet brilliant “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” advertisements Apple managed to walk all over Microsoft and contribute to what may be a permanent tarring of the Vista image.
Several months ago however there was the announcement that Microsoft had sold its latest $300 million advertising campaign to a _____ company
This month however we have began to see the launch of what we can only presume to be the new Microsoft campaign aimed at removing that anti-Vista stigma. The Microsoft website has been completely redesigned, removing the Aero inspired elements and replacing it with a lighter look, attractive and well designed. The design manages to say ‘Microsoft Windows’ without saying ‘Vista’ which is what I imagine the intention to be.
The most interesting thing on the front page is the banner advertisement declaring
“at one point, everyone thought the earth was flat”
Which I think is very good start and gives me a little more confidence in the Windows campaign. It’s clever and unique and gets the message across without being corny or seeming to compete with the Apple ads in any way.
The website the banner leads to is also well designed and provides a whole lot of easy to read and understand information about Vista. The only thing I still don’t think is being sold well about Vista is some good solid reasons for upgrading. The list given is quite short and really a lot more could be said, but I guess I’m not running a multi-billion dollar company here so they probably know best.
Tags: advertising, apple, microsoft, vista, Windows
Related posts
Read »