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Aug 19, 08 - 09:20 am Comment from: madgunde

These ads are great. Well, the pizza and throne ones are, the tea ad was a bit lame.

Aug 19, 08 - 09:20 am Comment from: Jimbo von Winskinheimer

All 3 are funny. Sure to infuriate the Windows crowd.

Aug 19, 08 - 09:21 am Comment from: madgunde

Oh, and FIRST POST BIOTCHES!

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Aug 19, 08 - 09:22 am Comment from: ericdano

Madgunde, I think you need some of them there bath salts........

lol.

Not the best but still funny!

Aug 19, 08 - 09:25 am Comment from: madgunde

@ericdano
Yeah, they don't call me MADgunde for nothing...

How much did they cost to make?

How effective are they?

M$ get your copiers running, Oh! you don't have copiers? Then get your Vista powered scanners running then!!! Ha! ha! haaa!!!!

CRASH!!! Another chair bites the dust!

Aug 19, 08 - 09:28 am Comment from: shen

lol!

"banished!"

i might buy the bath salts, but will they crash my tub?

"How much did they cost to make?"

Not one Zune point.

Aug 19, 08 - 09:36 am Comment from: ElderNorm

It just keeps on getting funnier and funnier.

Just a thought.
en

After the pathetic iPhone 2.0 release I'd be laying very low!!!!!

Aug 19, 08 - 09:40 am Comment from: Buster

They were ok but they have made much better....

eye taught eet waz speelled beeyotches?

Maybe it's a european thing, but it seems a bit crappy, slagging off the opposition. Surely they have lots of good things to say about their own offerings? Why refer to windows at all? Pretty much any adverts will serve the purpose anyway, the products almost sell themselves. I suppose the luvvies in whatever agency it was that churned out these mindless sequences will be claiming responsibility for the success of the machines.

MW hands, as in hands it on a plate to the ad agency. Who could fail?

I like how Apple takes breaks between ad runs in order to keep them fresh. Too much and we might get tired of them. Instead it feels like they're rolling out a new set at the perfect time.

Between the dancing silhouettes in the iPod commercials, the working hands in the iPhone commercials and the Get a Mac spots, it's amazing how Apple has so much contemporarily iconic advertising under its belt.

Aug 19, 08 - 09:51 am Comment from: Predrag

The "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" campaign seems to be by far the most effective one since the "Think Different" one (with Einstein, Ghandi, Amelia Erhardt, etc), possibly even more effective. My own anecdotal evidence tells me that, thanks to these ads, Windows people now KNOW that Macs are better, safer, faster, easier to use, better work with iPods and iPhones, etc.

For the most part, all of these Windows people have pretty much made up their mind; they WILL eventually switch to a Mac. The only question is how soon. In most cases, it will happen at the next computer upgrade.

Apple is making the ads even more agressive, if you haven't noticed. When they started two years ago, they were soft-hitting (a pie-chart representing vacation, virus, touché, etc). They just didn't want to immediately alienate people who knew nothing about Macs. Today, thanks to the two years (and over 40 different commercials), Windows people know exactly how much better Macs are, and Apple can continue to kick MS in the gut, with Windows users actually cheering.

This was probably the most brilliant campaign even conceived and the timing of it is perfect. The tipping point is approaching.

Blood is pouring from Windows' wounds...

..and Apple continues to twist the knife!

Oh but I am enjoying the spectacle.

Aug 19, 08 - 09:52 am Comment from: TowerTone

I don't think I have ever seen Mac clean shaven before.

It's not 'slagging off the competition', it's using humour to highlight what everyone knows about Windows.

Read Shakespeare or any successful storyteller (and theses ads are little stories) to know that just being 'nice' is going to be downright uninteresting, even boring.

Good joke.

TowerTone is sexy.

Aug 19, 08 - 10:00 am Comment from: Predrag

And to the European commenter (Zek), yes. It's a European thing. I have been bothered by it when I first arrived in the US, but this is how advertising (and political campaigning) is done in the US. You don't necessarilly need to exclusively point out your own virtues; if you want to be effective, you're much more successful if you point out your main competitor's shortcomings.

Make no mistake, TBWA/Chiat/Day, the agency responsible for the campaign, is the reason for the campaign's success, and one of the most significant reasons why Mac share is so rapidly climbing. Without such prominent and effective advertising, Macs would still command 3% share in the US, with all the failures of Vista.

And this is what these ads are about too...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Clothes

Aug 19, 08 - 10:04 am Comment from: MizuInOz

Today I met with a high roller business type from the USA and he had a blackberry POS of some sorts and he saw my iPhone and said, "I'llswitch when you can run Word and PPT and Excel docs on one...

I said he better get his ass the the AT&T;store when he gets back to the state because Enterprise is here and he can read all of the documents now... He got real quite and then asked how I liked using all of my Macs in my lab - Did I have any problems with not being able to run Windows programmes. To the which I replied, Oh I can run Windows programmes if I need to but I don't need to.

Double quite...

I don't think he is going to invest though... and I really don't care.

APPL rules!

Aug 19, 08 - 10:11 am Comment from: shen

"Maybe it's a european thing, but it seems a bit crappy, slagging off the opposition. Surely they have lots of good things to say about their own offerings?"

like say that they run office, or the features people like about their machines, or how easy they are to set up, or....

oh wait. they *did* say all of that.

what ads did you watch?

"I'd love to make a 911 call on my iPhone, but first I have to do a 4 hour restore"

ummm, what?

first the "iphone 2 is a disaster they should lay low after" and then a 4 hour restore? what color is the sky in your world?

i would lay low after a hugely successful launch that sold millions of high end phones that most market watchers are calling things like "game changer" and that people are already looking to as the phone they compare all new phones to. i would hide my head in the sand.....

is that really the bet you pathetic astroturfers can come up with?

Putting the crash time tea in a blue box was just genius.

Aug 19, 08 - 10:16 am Comment from: twodales

@sarasota
As well as the morning Raspberry Restart, absolutely inspired.

Aug 19, 08 - 10:35 am Comment from: CYxodus

Free pizza.

An ad can only be as good as the product it is advertising.

If the product is poor but is being hyped by the ad eg Vista, then the ad will be worse than the product because the outstanding feature in most people's mind will be that they felt utterly let doen after having their expectations raised to an all time high.

How may business' waited for Vista in order to upgrade?
How many business' cursed upon finding that their peripherals were not going to work with Vista?
How many business' gave up the idea of upgrading all their peripherals becuase Vista was too good to let go?
How many IT guys supported their bosses by asking for XP to be installed in what was their Vista machines?

Moral of the story:- If the product exceeds your expectation, any ad about the product will be a good one.
If the product sucks, no amount of advertising will convince you that the product a Zune isn't a turd and that is giving a turd a bad name!

That pizza box is, indeed, much better designed than usual PCs...

Zek,

I am sure it is a european thing. Apple has no need to brag about it's virtues. It is enough (and more humble) to say that, compared to your competitors, your products don't suck.

"I don't think I have ever seen Mac clean shaven before."

He is starting to go corporate.

"Maybe it's a european thing, but it seems a bit crappy, slagging off the opposition."

Yeah, it's definitely a European thing. The Europeans and Japanese don't like the ads all that much. Some even hate the ads. They don't like the direct comparisons, think it's uncouth.

On the other hand, the machines are selling better than ever. And the ads are iconic. So I'd be reluctant to change anything.

Comment from: madgunde
"These ads are great. Well, the pizza and throne ones are, the tea ad was a bit lame."


You got this completely backwards. The tea one is the only one I even smiled at.

"You are BANISHED!" ... best line yet.

Aug 19, 08 - 11:10 am Comment from: Zune Tang®

Not funny. Switching? Never.

Your potential. Our passion.™

Aug 19, 08 - 11:12 am Comment from: Chaplin

Banished is Great... Funny Shite...

Aug 19, 08 - 11:23 am Comment from: Macintosh

Anyone notice that YouTube video previews now show up on web pages on the iPhone? And when you click on the preview it plays it in the iPhone YouTube player, then goes back to the web page... Maybe that was added with the 2.0 software update but it's awesome regardless.

Aug 19, 08 - 11:42 am Comment from: Anonymous©

I guess subtlety doesn't translate so well to Europeans.

Mac does not criticise, critique or otherwise insult PC. If you notice, they are friends! In fact, Mac is generally sympathetic to PC. Also, Mac does not brag about his qualities. Generally, it's PC who mentions the things Mac is good at. The only time Mac says things like he gets no viruses is if PC asks him.

PC is a sympathetic character, we empathize with him. In fact, the vast majority of those watching will like the PC character far more than the Mac character.

Now, the people who see the ads, as I've outlined above, are those whom Apple are targeting as potential switchers. The people who see Mac as attacking PC, mostly teenage gamers, are not Apple's target audience. Whether europeans can pick up sympathy, empathy, humor, irony, sarcasm in the American-based ads, I can't tell. Perhaps, they'll have to tailor the ads to each culture. An interesting question for the sociologists.

Aug 19, 08 - 12:03 pm Comment from: Hm...

@ Anonymous©

It's not just the ads, but so much more that needs to be considered in other cultures. Remember the Chevy Nova? It didn't sell at all in Mexico — GM took a long time figuring out "No va."

Aug 19, 08 - 12:08 pm Comment from: Chip

I hadn't noticed the long version of "Sad Song" before (on the Apple site). Hilarious!

I use a PC (I'm a gamer; my wife uses a Mac) and I think the adds are funny as hell. I am a potential switcher, at this point. To sell me, Mac just needs to have more games (especially MMOs) run native to its system.

Im a mac lover but these ads are getting old and played out

I hope you make the leap. I know so many people who switched.
Even my own Mac loathing PC head brother did. Used Hackintosh for a long time, then got himself an iMac.
Why not just use your PC for games and Mac for everything else? The PC is good for something.

How 'bout some ads showing how well the Mac works instead of ragging on the competition?

The objective of the campaing switched progressively :

- 1st Phase : point weaknesses solved by Mac OS

- 2nd Phase (actual phase) : everybody nows Macs are easier, simpler, cleaner...
--> The new objective is to tell people they are ridicoulous buying PC. So in actual and comming ads, PC will be more and more presented in ridiculous situation that nobody want to be identified with.

Why would anyone want to see the worse-than-VHS quality of YouTube instead of seeing the ads on Apple's site?

Aug 19, 08 - 02:09 pm Comment from: The Other Steve

Sorry "madgunde"
I thought the tea ad was the funniest one.

The throne ad is the most important ad as it get the point across that Windows users can bring their old PC in and Apple will transfer their data to their new mac for them for free!

If Apple has the people to do that, then they should run the #&%@ out of that ad!

Aug 19, 08 - 02:13 pm Comment from: The Other Steve

@Thisson

For your next computer, get a hi-end mac with a good graphics card and put windows on it. That way you have ONE computer to run your Windows-only games AND all the other stuff!

You will still need to get a virus program or two for the Windows side.

"Remember the Chevy Nova? It didn't sell at all in Mexico — GM took a long time figuring out 'No va.'"

Urban myth.

http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp