With a mission to empower small businesses to be more engaging, creative and unique, I hope this new website becomes your go-to resource for “New Marketing” ideas and information. Thank you for your understanding and any feedback emailed to Richard @ RABpromo dot com.
Over the last couple of years we’ve been entertained by the slick Mac vs. PC commercials that have repeatedly taken shots at Microsoft and to Microsoft’s discredit… Mac had a point, a lot of very good points. But you know all that and you probably know how much of the personnel computing market that Mac has been gaining over the last years… also to Microsoft’s discredits.
So finally we see Microsoft return fire in an incredibly clever branding move, Microsoft has now turned the branding war into a game of chess. While this spot is well done in an upbeat “we are the world” fashion, Microsoft has been ignoring it’s brand for as long as I can remember and its customers for even longer. While it’s nice to be seen as “friendly” and “of the people” Microsoft has bigger problems, they need to overcome labels like: “Overly complicated for no apparent reason” “difficult to maintain and update” “user-unfriendly” (and in vista’s case) “what the hell is this” or “counter intuitive” “constantly updating” “look it’s updating again and it’ll still suck” and so the list goes on. Certainly if Microsoft doesn’t step up its product and CRM, there will be different translations for their new “I am a PC” phrase like: I am overly complicated, I am user-unfriendly, etc. Not to hindsight bash Microsoft, but I believe they missed real opportunities with Vista. Vista could have been the new “uber” operating system everyone should want… I remember the first iterations of Windows being seen as wondrous improvements that were going to make my systems fly. The other big opportunity lost was their lack of intuitiveness in the product. What were they thinking?
As an aside, I just wan to mention that Microsoft is in th midst of another product nightmare with Internet Explorer and they’re probably trying to put out the “Vista fire” first, but it’ll be very interesting to see what happens on the browser side. Anyway, these next strategic branding moves are going to be ever more important and one could argue this is the best branding show since the rise of Avis. Below you’ll find a newest PC spot, I’ll try to post more of the campaign by this afternoon.
-Richard
To all broadcasters, agency reps, media buyers, radio folks, newspaper, billboard, magazine, and all other ad supported media out there… Google’s CEO has declared war on you and entire ad supported business model be it television, print, web or whatever.You see, last week Google CEO Eric Schmidt appeared on CNBC’s Mad Money with Jim Kramer and while the majority of the show focused on Jim cheerleading for Google stock, Mr. Schmidt uttered 2 words during the program that caught my attention “Measurable Advertising.” That’s right, Google has discovered your weak link and they just let the cat out of the bag.
(Insert cliché of choice here equivalent to “The time is now!”).
So, assemble your greatest minds, begin new research projects, prepare to storm the Neilson gates or whatever you need to do, but focus your efforts on how you’re going to compete against “Measureable Advertising” because like it or not, Nielson may have met its match and you may soon be taking a check from Google’s ad placement technology.
Not possible? Okay, let’s see:
Google already has self ad-serving tools for placing one’s own television, radio and internet ads.
Google will continue growing these types of partnerships until they can deliver ads across multiple platforms to any region or demographic in the country (or world).
With a mission to empower small businesses to be more engaging, creative and unique, I hope this new website becomes your go-to resource for “New Marketing” ideas and information. Thank you for your understanding and any feedback emailed to Richard @ RABpromo dot com.
