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Apple tweaks Microsoft over Vista ad spending

We did say that for Microsoft to acknowledge Apple's "I'm a PC/I'm a Mac" ads was a mistake. And Apple's latest ones are sure making hay from it...

Last month I noted that Microsoft was dropping - early - its Seinfeld-inspired campaign (I'm not saying "inspired Senfeld campaign" though) in favour of a new bunch that go more towards Apple's "I'm a PC/I'm a Mac" thing, taking it on full-frontal.

I wrote:

And what is Microsoft doing now? It seems that it's rolling out ads which resemble Apple's "I'm a Mac" one, in which a John Hodgman lookalike (Hodgman plays the chubby PC in those ads) says, "Hello, I'm a PC, and I've been made into a stereotype."

This is a mistake. Even I can see this is a mistake. It's the error of "framing": that is, letting your rival set the ground on which you fight. (It's the error the Obama campaign keeps making whenever it focuses even the slightest attention on Sarah Palin, instead of the rival presidential candidate, which is who Obama is really up against.)

What was clever about the Seinfeld ads was that it simply ignored the "I'm a Mac" campaign. It treated it as nonexistent; it went its own way. If Microsoft's bosses cannot see that taking on Apple on the very terms that Apple has set is a mistake then....

And sure enough, Apple has been very quick to leap on what's going on. There's the new advert "Bean Counter":

In which "PC" is allotting tons of money for advertising, and a weeny amount for "fixing Vista".

Alternatively there's Bake Sale, which does much the same:

Now let's compare Microsoft's "I'm a PC" ad:

OK, maybe I don't work in advertising, but it seems to me that it's still a mistake. For those who like PCs and Windows, the PC ad is great. (For those who don't know it, it's great too - my kids love it, while having no notion of the divisions of the computer market.) For them, the Apple ads will come across as smug and annoying. And inexplicable.

But if you're someone who's been a bit annoyed at any stage by Windows, especially Vista, and you're considering a Mac, the Apple ads could just be that thing that makes you consider it. The difference, then: the Microsoft ad only reinforces how you feel; the Apple ad might crystallise a change of mind. And Apple only needs to do that often enough to sell above-industry-growth numbers of computers.

Like it just did. Still sure about the ad campaign, Microsoft? Only asking...

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