Homeless Frank and Microsoft's cookie-cutter PC campaign

When Disney or McDonald's advertise to children, they know they aren't just getting one purchase - the child - by targeting the parents' emotional weak spot. They are getting multiple sales: as the whole family will go to Disney World or buy their fast food, meaning two, three, four times as much money. It's a simple trick: …

[IR]

This pot is really black, ignore the blackness of that kettle

"It's telling, though, that Microsoft's approach to advertising on Windows is as uniform as its approach to selling Windows. One-size-fits all pricing, rigid brand policing, control of the channel, and restricted access to code. It's a restrictive and controlling model "

And this is different to Apple how? The "I'm a Mac" adverts were exactly the same in both countries but with different actors. There are a handful of Macs available, but a million different PCs can install Windows. If you are going to talk dirt on Microsoft by comparing them to Apple, at least pick out something that Apple doesn't already do and much worse.

[Mathew White]

Kids posting pictures...

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there slightly dodgy about portraying kids uploading pictures of their home and themselves to the internet without parental supervision

"My name's Kathy, i like to use MSN to talk to my friends. My friend sammy told me to upload pictures of me in the bath to the internet because he likes to see bubbles. It was really easy - i didn't even need mommy[/mummy] to help me"

etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

I tell you what...

..you could be the biggest fanboy of either side of this argument and still find this hilarious.

Brilliant stuff!

[Fihart]

Let's not go Apple on MS debate ! Oh alright....

MS ads always miss by a mile because they're clods, immune to irony. Example; the dreadful one with Gates and (was it really ?........) Seinfeld.

MS ads mostly do more harm than good. They'd be better off keeping quiet about Vista. We know that the cute little tots will be foaming at the mouth within minutes of trying to do anything in Windows. The laptop comparison ad ?.... no cool guy would buy an HP instead of an Apple (it'd be a Sony or Toshiba).

Though I detest Apple's fey, effete, overpriced and under-teched products, I can't fault the company's taste. The products look good, the OS looks good. As a copywriter I have to say their ads are sharp and locally relevant (well, The Mitchell and Webb ones were).

[Lee]

I think homeless Frank may be an actor???

OK, I own/use/prefer a Mac, I run an independent computer shop, i have just bought my little girl a new laptop (Microsoft XP) and use Linux on my little netbook- how do i fit into Microsofts (or apple for that reasons) world.

Can you not just use what you want whichever YOU feel is the best, is right for the job, how you want to feel about the laptop/desktop you are using.

Personally i would have all of the ad men (and women, no sexism here) and shoot the lot of them

Saying that I do think that 'Homeless Frank' is possibly one of the best parodies i have ever seen

[Anonymous Coward]

@Mathew White

Here we go again (sigh)

"OH NOEZ DA PEEDOZ R EVERYWHEREZ!!!!"

Child sex abuse has stayed the same or decreased since the 60s, but as usual people keep finding reasons to bring it up, whats next "Parents (moron mothers and cowed men) call for all males to be added to the sex offenders register at birth or culled to protect pretty female babies from any risk!!!"

All I can say I hope all you stupid scare story believing f*cktards die, your "paedophiles everywhere" and "all men are sex offenders" attitudes are what makes this country a shithole, that and the bloody chavs

Sod off to the heil or Sun, I'm sure you'll find plenty of friends there, if your quick you might even find a position of favour with jackboot jacqui before she gets the boot.

You idiots make my head hurt

[Paul Webb]

Thew video reminds me of...

.. the Kellogg's Crunchy Nut Advert - the one with the bloke using his laptop to keep his head dry in the rain!

Paul

[Anonymous Coward]

Us Brits are so superior

I imagine british firms' advertising in the states would be just as lame, except british products are so inferior that they are generally not worth exporting. Judging from this article, the only thing britain exports in quantity is snobbery, of which there must be a local surplus. I mean really, exactly what does britain have to be snobbish about. Is it that the days of british glory are only 200 years in the past, whilst the French must look back 400 years? By that measure, poeple in the states can rightly lord it over our poor british brothers and sisters, as the US was pretty damn cool right up to maybe 30 years ago.

(These days we're exporting intellectual property; software, and stupid business models that drop the whole world into recession. When was the last time britain got the whole world to do anything? Are we talking the mini-skirt?)

[Anonymous Coward]

disgusting commercials

I don't know who is worse....mac or ms....they both suck big ones.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it.

What's it advertising?

Paris, because I know what she's advertising.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: pot, kettle etc

>And this is different to Apple how?

Nobody said it was.

[JC]

What did you expect?

They already had world domination, it's not as though they need to find a compelling reason to make people choose their OS when it comes on most computers sold.

This isn't marketing, it's more like a friendly reminder that they are holding practically all the cards.

[Charles King]

You need to reprogram your robo-writer

"One-size-fits all pricing, rigid brand policing, control of the channel" You're describing Apple here, did you get confused about which PC behemoth you were writing about? What happened to all the complaints about different versions of Vista at different prices?

[Toastan Buttar]

We're Linux

Egads, that winning 'Linux ad' really sucked. What the hell was it supposed to be advertising ? I could honestly imagine someone asking if you could get Linux for Windows after watching it.

The flying penguins one was good, though.

[Will Godfrey]

Wooosh!

That's the sound of it going right over my head. I couldn't make any sense of the {ahem} advert at all.

[Seán]

Yuk yuk yuk

I'd still rather kill myself than buy a piece of shit proprietary rip off mac. It's not really the hardware it's the scum who use them.

[GFK1]

huh?

"spurious economics, inverse snobbery and flawed logic" - wow, that was a brave and perfect description of your own article.

Paris, obviously....

[John White]

"Disney" PC adverts

having seen these cringing adverts - all it says to me is

"I'm a kid; My computer runs a child's operating system. It's a child's toy"

Sums it up quite well I thought

[Rob Clive]

US != World

At least Microstuff have remade the ads. A certain large soft drinks maker doesn't bother; they think the title of this comment is false.

[John]

one size fits all?

Apple's the one with the one size fits all attitude! I don't care about garageband (much) but I have to have get it if I want iPhoto 09. iPhoto 06 may be a little old and sometimes buggy, but it'll do me for a while yet.

MS is the one with home basic, premium, business, ultimate, etc (though I admit the segmentation of features is annoying)

[Dave]

I'm a PC

When my daughter was about three, she was learning her alphabet and numbers off a PowerBook 145b. Generally speaking, she thought that she was a three-year old girl, not a computer of any kind.

In the follow up adverts, see little Timmy agreeing to a spyware scan, and see how easy it is to send Dad's special photos of Mum off to his entire address book in one easy click...

[Anonymous Coward]

Advertising to the same old consumers...

I can only see the kid adverts appealing to child molesters, and the Homeless Frank advert appealing to morons. I thought advertising was meant to expand your audience?

[Andreas Johansson]

Scandinavian ads

"Or how about Magnus, the seven-year-old Scandinavian in his grass-roofed home editing pics of dad's Volvo?"

To be honest, I can't even remember ever seeing a Microsoft commercial in Sweden on TV. I do think there was some ads when XP was released, but mostly on billboards. I really hope they keep it that way.