“Following a complaint from Apple, Microsoft has quietly tweaked at least one of the ads in its “Laptop Hunters” campaign to reflect its rival’s lower pricing on its Mac notebooks,” Rupal Parekh reports for Advertising Age.
MacDailyNews Note: The only “proof” that Apple complained that we can find comes from Microsoft’s Chief Operating Officer Kevin “Cartwheel Boy” Turner who made the claim during a presentation at a Microsoft conference on July 15th that he received a call from Apple’s legal department was the “greatest single phone call” he’s ever taken and that Microsoft planned to “keep running them and running them and running them.” He forgot to add “after we edit them to remove our false claims.”
Parekh continues, “In the 60-second spot, called “Lauren and Sue,” we watch as law student Lauren shops around with the help of her Mom in the hopes of finding a computer under $1,700… In the original version, Lauren at one point comes upon an Apple computer and declares: ‘This Mac is $2,000, and that’s before adding anything.'”
Parekh reports, “In the latest version of the ad, that portion has been edited out. The original ad has been removed from YouTube and other sites by Microsoft, and replaced with a version in which Lauren doesn’t talk about how much the Mac costs, but she does say: ‘It seems like you’re paying a lot for the brand.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we’ve already previously explained — amid all sorts of ludicrous, asinine disinformation regarding this issue — Microsoft had to do this in order to keep their ads targeted at inexperienced, shortsighted, sticker-priced-obsessed, uncool PC buyers within the bounds of legality. Please see: Apple legal forces Microsoft to stop falsely advertising MacBook Pro price – July 16, 2009.
