Don’t call it a Chromebook, It’s been here for years

I just finished saying how strong sound can be in marketing when this great ad by Google came blasting out of my TV during NFL Monday night football’s commercial breaks (thank god for TV time, these games are too long, and are two days of every week reeeeeeally necessary?!!?).  Anyhow, the song is amazing, that caught my ear.  The engaging graphics, they caught my eye.  I mean, using Power Rangers Megazord (I don’t even know what that is, I had to look it up) to illustrate virus protection is genius.  Especially when edited to the beat of the music.  Judge for yourself:

It’s called “For Everything: Built-In,” which I have to say, doesn’t do the ad (or the product) justice.  IMHO.  The ad is great.   It explains in an entertaining way how it makes your life more awesome, and hers, and his, and….for everyone???  Yes, young Jedi, everyone.

I’ve found spots from the same campaign running as early as December of 2012 by agency Mullen and they were… OK.   This latest artistic production casts such a large shadow that the old ones will soon be hard to find.

I’m amazed that the Chromebook has been around that long…this is the first I’m hearing of it?   Maybe this is the first time an ad for it has effectively cut through the clutter.   Maybe the damn thing was doomed by its meh-meh name.  Chromebook??  Who wants a book made of chrome?  

Anybody?  

Anybody?
Didn’t think so.  Sounds heavy.  Cold to the touch.  Very old, dare I say…dead.  Nothing like a computer that’s not a computer but brings all the best of a computer (the web) with none of its worst (PC-like prerequisites: virus protection, 5-minute boot ups, endless updates, never-ending patches, never enough document storage, losing your documents, expensive software).

Revolutionary!

Instead of harping on the negativity of what we’ve begrudgingly accepted as the norm (as this Old Chromebook Ad from 12/12/12 did), this new ad sings with the happier times ahead because of the revolutionary new Chromebook.

And at $279, it’s for Everyone.  Yeah.

Duopolies of Stagnation

My last post talked about how the iCloud made my life less awesome. As I think about the two biggest players in the tech space, namely Apple and Microsoft, it strikes me that perhaps duopolies are perhaps worse for us than monopolies or or other types of opolies.

They are both big, and produce things we can’t live without today. Their products and services are rife with flaws that even cut throat competition doesn’t solve. Why the heck is Apple releasing iOS 7.2 so closely on the heels of 7.0??? Why on earth is it Microsoft hasn’t had a truly innovative product since the 1990s?

Just like the government, we have two, equally large parties, which really haven’t produced anything of value of late…the shutdown a manifestation of this fact.

Is a tug of war between two constituents of equal weight and equal brand power just a recipe for stagnation and….crummy output?

Note to Microsoft: This is America

If you think this is going to be a blog post slamming Microsoft…..Um…you’d be right.  I bought a Lenovo IdeaPad with ……(just end my life now)…Windows 8.  

This is what window dressing looks like

We thought about getting a Mac instead of a PC.  The sole reason we ultimately made the unfortunate decision to go with a PC is because I do a ton of work in MS Excel.  I’m an Excel geek.  And as many of you dear readers know, Microsoft decided to provide the short bus version of Excel to Mac.  Buttons aren’t in the same place as on a PC, it’s slow as hell and I’d swear Mac Excel is missing very basic functionality available in PC Excel.  I’d swear to that because I couldn’t find it.  If it had been a Pavlovian experiment it would have ended with me throwing the machine on the floor and dancing on it, screaming with my arms in the air like a Rhesus monkey.

Oh, but that’s not all I hate about my new PC:

1. Windows 8 is mere window dressing devised cover up the fact that all Microsoft hasn’t had a new idea since 1995.  The open screen is a NetVibes rip off and only serves to frustrate the user.  Because again, you can’t find what you need and nothing is where you’d expect it to be.

2. Our brand spankin new computer came with tons of preloaded garbage on it we didn’t want.  And I’m having a hard time removing all the crap.  I mean, if I spend >$1,100 on a new machine, don’t load it up with your crap.  Please.  When I buy something new I expect it to come de-crapped.  

What crap, you ask?  Crap that pops up when I’m trying to work that tries to get me to buy other crap.  Pop ups that persistently block part of what I’m working on…..pop ups I can’t close.  McAfee Security, Severe Weather Alerts, eBay, Speed Up my PC, Nitro Pro 8, just to name a few.  

Speed up my PC!!!!  Really!?!?!  I just bought this freakin’ machine new and I am going to need “Speed up my PC!!!”  Yeah, sadly, because Microsoft loaded so much garbage on my new machine due to their numerous “partnerships” I might actually need Speed Up my PC.  They should’ve just called it “Speed up my NEW PC.”

3.  I like Google.  This is America.  I should be free to choose the browser of my choice.  But god help me on this machine every time I go to Google, the piece of crap sends me back to Bing.  Dammit man, I want to use Google.  Google toolbar then mysteriously turns into a yahoo search bar complete with flashing ads on the sides.  No, maybe you didn’t hear me: I WANT TO USE GOOGLE.  I go into settings change it as my default browser.  Again back to Bing.  This is so unAMERiCAN.  I want to use Google.  Bing!  I feel like Charlie Brown getting constantly duped by Lucy…ARRGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Shame on you Microsoft.  You can’t expect people to fall for this and continue to buy your stuff.  Marketing Rule 437: Don’t ever assume your consumers are stupid.  You can’t hold us Excel geeks hostage to your horrible PC antics listed above. This is America, and we vote with our dollar.   And this is the last dollar Microsoft will EVER get from this Excel geek.

Oh Snap! Do you still think I’m pretty?

You might have enjoyed the latest advertising attack by Microsoft on the iPad like I did, during Sunday night football while I was…on my iPad.

The narrative of the mock Siri caught my ear first.  Then the side by side comparison with its clever wording (no kickstand!, I’m going to need a “hand” with that).  Clearly entertaining, regardless what side of the technology divide you sit (or type) on.

I’m not going to go into technical specs of one vs. the other, whether Microsoft displayed “truth in advertising” when it showed the Surface RT’s keyboard as part of the tablet’s total price (which is actually only available as an add-on for an extra $100), or whether the $900 million accounting charge was related to the product’s price cut and excess inventory, no, no, no dear reader.  What I do want to talk about – what we need to get to the bottom of, is…Did you enjoy the commercial?

Did you really??  Did you enjoy it enough to:

a) laugh out loud

b) try to insert the closest available USB into your iPhone while engaging Siri to get her to say dirty things (“…No, no, I don’t do that”)

c) continue to watch the game while yelling into the other room “Are you sure there aren’t more chips?!?!”

d) buy a Surface RT at the next available moment

I was impressed, a bit taken off guard.  I mean, Microsoft (or at least an agency hired by them) was, for a moment, funny.  Apple started this whole spat back when it made Justin Long famous enough to make Drew Barrymore consider dating him for a nanosecond in the PC vs. Mac commercials.  PC was a chubby, boring, uptight, pretentious square.  Justin Long was….I guess….just Justin Long but, whatever he was, he was cooler than PC.

The Mac vs. PC commercials did several things that these new Microsoft Surface RT ads don’t.  They established a brand identity for Apple.  They presented a new idea, a new way of doing things vs. the old and trite.  They got people interested in and behind the Apple brand and what it stood for.  These ads were funny, and they sold product.

The new Surface RT ads merely pit one product against another, product spec by product spec.  And, if you believe the bit above about the accounting charge mentioned above, these ads don’t even sell units.  Really, if you took away the faux Siri voice I probably wouldn’t have even looked up from my iPad.