Folks, dump the velocepede, and get a motorized carriage! Do it today!
My Way News — This is just daft. Selling a product to people who already own it? This is like running a generic ad campaign to get people into the idea of driving a car. Who is running Microsoft? Montgomery Burns?
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is launching one of its biggest and costliest advertising campaigns ever – but don’t expect the big splash to accompany a new product.
Instead, the campaign premiering Monday is aimed at revitalizing consumer interest in Microsoft’s dominant Windows operating system.
A new version of Windows has not been released since Windows XP debuted nearly four years ago. And although Microsoft plans to launch a new version in late 2006, the company said Friday that this new campaign will not be geared toward that product, code-named Longhorn.
Scott Lennard, director of advertising for Microsoft’s consumer marketing group, would not say whether Microsoft is concerned that the aggressive television, print and Internet campaign focused on Windows XP could spur consumers to buy the older product – effectively snagging sales from Longhorn when it’s released.
I know exactly what this means. This means that Longhorn is going to be delayed yet again. There is no way in heck Microsoft would be spending this kind of money on advertising XP unless XP is going to be here for a long long long time.
Maybe it’s some kind of new viral campaign or a vapor ad. I guess this is part of the Win LH suspense or something. I’m sure it will be faster, make XP look like Win 95 and all of this and more of that. They have a monopoly, so they can do whatever they want. Maybe they will put out an MP3 player next and throw in the new OS upgrade for free. Sort of like the U2 ipod, only with P2P for Windows Media.
The thing is, Windows is stale. Office is stale. Everything Microsoft is doing is stale. I do’t know how a marketing campaign will change that.
I’ve worked in IT for about 15 years, and am still a fan of many of Microsoft’s technologies, including Windows, Office, Exchange and SQL Server. But they’re all stale! There’s no innovation anywhere! I live in the hope of seeing the day when OpenOffice will be better than MS Office and run on half the hardware, or when Apple comes up with a real Powerpoint killer, or MySQL can beat SQL Server…
I think Microsoft would do better with their money to start some sort of ‘skunkworks’ division that could work outside of the formal, stuffed up corporate bureaucracy that MS has turned itself into and try and come up with really innovative stuff. Why not even dabble in open source? Staying away from the open source is alienating a class of users that might one day become influent – aka geeks – in corporations. Why not ally with them instead?
Hey, I thought Microsoft Bob’s campaign was the largest recorded!
I agree with you John. This only show just how much cash MS has to throw around and they are reallly just promoting their monopoly!
Maybe they’ll be throwing in some subliminal XBox2 ads in between the next-gen OS screenshots ! LOL
It’s probably aimed at people like me, with a 4 year old computer running Windows ME. And to keep me from getting an Apple mini.
Still faster than the damn Sun Ray’s at work, though. 50 users, sheesh.
Apparently, Microsoft’s strategy is to yell loud enough to drown out the pitches of the competition.
Apple Computer, Inc. announces the releas…MICROSOFT WINDOWS…MICROSOFT WINDOWS…MICROSOFT WINDOWS….MICROSOFT WINDOWS…MICROSOFT WINDOWS…goddammit Steve Ballmer, will you shutupMICROSOFTWINDOWSMICROSOFTWINDOWSTHEYCAN’THEREYOUAPPLENANABOOBOOWINDOWSRULESWECANDOTHISALLNIGHTWEGOTFORTYBILLIONDOLLARS…
Screw you, Microsoft.
Does it matter? AFAIK, Longhorn is just more of the same old, same old, built on top of the original NT base from what, way back in 1993? Every programmer knows that whatever is built into release 1 is what you are forever constrained by.
MS needs to start over from square one instead of patching old code constructs. That’s the only way they will ever have a chance at making an OS with better security.
Microsoft tends to be clever about ad campaigns. In this case they may have decided that things are not going wll with XP’s reputation; they have nothing new coming out soon; and they can afford to buy a big ad campaign to try to lift sales.
– The Precision Blogger
http://precision-blogging.blogspot.com
Hilarious! This is an example of what John has been saying about M$ for several years now. How can a company spend money with such abandon as having essentially no purpose…
Well, I hear your point, this is an unusual advertising strategy. But, perhaps this could just be seen as a good will compaign designed to make more people like Windows.
Perhaps the goal is less to sell new products and more to get people to buy legal copies. Perhaps they feel that if the public sentiment is better about Windows, Longhorn will be better received.
Advertising is about a lot of things, and it’s not always about hocking a specific model of a specific product. Often it’s just about manipulating perseptions in general.
Wasting money is fine since it’s their money. Wasting time is an art for many people in the world of personal technology. Look at blogging. In a year or two blogging may be dead. The real professional elite writers won’t sign on to it in significant numbers, it’s a mixed bag for the academics, the spammers will screw it up to the point email is screwed up and the next big thing will blow it apart. I don’t know what will wreck blogging as we know it, I just have the feeling that it is more about buzz than biz. Perhaps Adobe will have the next big thing in publishing that will be better or believed to be better than blogging. If the users can make money or save time, it will kill blogging. Look for a bunch of ads to be popping up all over blogs, advertising the new standard of something or other. I blog, but it’s real low on the priority list. Blogging isn’t that big of a deal. Maybe Microsoft is going to spend millions running ads to get people to use their free blogging service. Blogging isn’t saving much in the way of time, unless you blog less and do something else more. I think blogging has peaked and will decline sooner or later. I have to go and do some real stuff now, so blogging can wait until later. Maybe I’ll blog on Friday, if I’m not too busy.
Large corporations have gained tremendous political power and the fawning support of the media. What’s good for business is good for America. Certainly one way to influence editorial opinion in your favor is to be a big advertiser. So you have no new product, but still want the media to think twice before skewering you, or even giving a time slice to an opposing view? Advertise. Advertise big.
And out of the silent software jungle comes the roar of the Tiger. It will be a little harder to hear than it might have been, but you didn’t really think Cowboy Bill and his code wranglers were going to sit back and watch it roar until the cattle drive made it to market sometime in the Fall did you? The ‘Hole in the O.S. Gang’ is headin’ em off at the pass to combat the huge rush of free publicity Apple will get with the release of OSX 1.4 on Friday. The recent sucess of the Mac mini, iTunes, and the ongoing iPod phenomenon have created a lot of positive buzz at exactly the right time, paving the way for a successful release of Tiger. Maybe the boys in Redmond feel the need to remind people just who IS the Sheriff of Cyber City. People accuse MS of being lots of things from phantomware snake oil peddlers to the minions of Hell itself – but few would call them dumb. billy – bulls and tigers and penguins…oh my!