That Damn Ad
There is a large group of Mac fans that remain constantly befuddled as to why Apple doesn’t advertise the Mac on TV. The days of wondering why stockpiles of cash remain unspent while the public remains largely unaware that Apple makes nifty computers in addition to the ubiquitous iPod are now, officially, over. The reason, which is obvious in light of Apple’s new TV ad, (which only nominally promotes the Mac) Apple hadn’t been pushing the Mac on TV is because they clearly have no idea what makes the Mac special.
Before discussing the deficiencies and strengths of Apple’s long awaited TV ad for Macs the controversy surrounding the originality of the spot should be examined. The trouble stems from a video made by The Postal Service for their song Such Great heights. Yes, the Apple advertisement does bear a striking resemblance to the video. It is also nearly inarguable that the Apple spot is, at the least, derivative of the video. Temper these realizations with the fact that The Postal Service is getting a lot of ink and pixels due to all the controversy and realize that this is actually a huge win for the band.
With the controversy noted and dismissed, we can turn our attention to the more pressing matter of the thirty seconds of advertising ineptitude that comprises the new Mac television ad. There are four things the commercial is telling us and all of them are mistakes. If you need to acquaint yourself with the ad, take a look. For the link averse, the voiceover is as follows:
“The Intel Chip. For years, it’s been trapped inside PCs, inside dull little boxes dutifully performing dull little tasks when it could have been doing so much more. Starting today, the Intel chip will be set free and get to live inside a Mac. Imagine the possibilities.”
The first thing we note is that Windows users have been buying “dull little boxes” to perform “dull little tasks.” With that line Apple has not only denigrated the Windows world but has also managed to reduce anything a Windows user could possibly be doing on a computer to a “dull little task.” Calling the people you’re trying to convert to a Mac “dull” probably isn’t the best way to garner goodwill. Apple made the same mistake when they ran the Lemmings SuperBowl commercial in 1985.
The other problem is that by telling people that they’ve been doing dull little tasks you’re telling them that the Mac is capable of so much more than their mundane duties. It seems like a smart message, after all, who doesn’t want a computer that can do more than the competition? The truth is most people don’t want a computer that can do more, they want a computer that can do their “dull tasks” more easily. Where is the motivation to buy a Mac for someone who just surfs the ‘net, manages digital photos, and sends e-mails? Those are all fairly dull tasks after all.
The ad is also telling people that currently use Macs they are fairly dense as well. All this time you’ve been using a substandard chip, and you didn’t even know it. This is reminiscent of the early Hardee’s thick burger campaign (west coasters should substitute the name “Carl Jrs” when they see “Hardees”). Right now Hardees may be pushing their grease laden, heart clogging foodstuffs with annoying “Cheese Paper” ads or with titillation but when the campaign first began they started by telling their current clientele they had absolutely no taste in food.
For those that don’t remember the early Hardee’s ads, the commercials consisted of black and white interview type film with very jerky camera movements. The CEO of Hardees or perhaps the beef supplier would sit and tell the viewers how awful the previous incarnation of Hardees’ burgers were and how the new ones were infinitely better. It was tantamount to telling any current customers of Hardees that they had spent the last few years paying good money for food made entirely from downer cattle. Apple is sending Mac users, at least those without the latest iMac, the same message. My G5 wishes to thank you, Apple. Still, this may be the canniest part of the ad, now the vast majority of Mac users will feel that their machines are substandard and rush to buy a Mac with an acceptable chip.
All the previous complaints are petty and inconsequential when compared to the ads biggest transgression: reducing the Mac to a pretty box and a processor. The chip, we are solemnly told, “Will get to live inside a Mac.” Why there is no doubt that Mac’s feature spiffy industrial design the notion that an Intel chip just sitting in a pretty box makes the machine more desirable is ludicrous. It was a perfect chance for the copywriter to write “Starting today the Intel chip will get to power the most advanced operating system on earth: OS X.” The iMac on the screen would have made the point that Mac’s feature non-dull boxes.
When it is all said and done it probably doesn’t matter too much. Computers aren’t something people buy on impulse (the moments following a MacWorld keynote excepted) and even the deftest commercial won’t suddenly flip the market share numbers to Apple’s favor. In this case, all the people, including myself, yearning for Apple to promote the Mac in prime time media probably should have remembered the old adage: Be careful what you ask for, because you just might get it.
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Comments
What does “flip the market” is that moment when you see something neat and thing “Wow! and it’s _that_ easy?”. We all recall it when we first saw the “apple way”.
THAT can be show to those in the dark. Inspire - don’t deride.
I live in hope that Apple’s PR people one day understand that the OS is a massive sales device but people have to be shown it.
A kid with a camera, making a podcast etc can be shown fast enough in an ad to make PC users drop a jaw or two.
Chris,
I totally agree with you. What marketing people don’t understand is that commercials are so subliminal these days even when not trying to be. I’ve seen the ad dozens of times and sometimes when I think about I get upset because it’s not really telling someone WHY they should go out and buy a Mac. This ad is going to stick in the brain of non-Mac users even when the TV is off and the message is not a good one. I’m with you: The reason that I buy Macs is because of OS X. There is absolutely no other operating system that even comes close to what it can do. Not Windows. Not Linux. Not BeOS. Nothing. I buy Mac hardware becasue thats the only way I can use the software.
What I think is that Mac users should start making their own ads promoting the Mac and show Apple how it could be done. Ads done on iMovie or FCP by Mac users on why you should go out and buy a Mac or things you can do on OS X that you can’t do on Windows or Linux. Then maybe when Apple sees these better ads they’ll start to take notice…...
No iPod ad told people how easy the iPod was to use. They told them how cool it was.
Apple is now doing the same thing for the Mac. When was the last car ad you saw that told you how fast the car went from zero to a hundred or how fuel efficient it was?
I don’t think you guys really get what marketing is all about.
David
Cheers to Super Dave, marketing runs deeper than most people can imagine. Being a Mac geeks for many years and hearing PCer’s bash us is a good reason for the slap in the face that was delivered to the Windows environment in that commercial. The outlook that Mr. Jobs conveyed in that add was not to promote the machine as much as it was to say “Excuse me, but its time to smell the coffee.” Intel has had its name on so many boxes in the past that people look for that in a computer, its truly a popularity contest. You tend to buy what everybody else does. Apple does not need to advertise how great it is on TV, but to just put enough food on the table to lore the hungry man to the kitchen. Once they get to the Apple store its history. Example, I am a person that wants to see what I am buying, toy with it, look at its pros and cons and you can’t do this in any other computer store on earth, atleast not with the courtesy you get at thier stores. The Mac is by far more of a machine than any other on the planet and adding a superior OS makes it that much better. If you don’t beieve me when was the last time you seen a Mercedes or Rolls Royce commercial on the tube.
I think that a lot of PC users are aware of the fact that they just do dull little tasks. It is not that they couldn’t do more exciting things, it is just that these dull little tasks are hard enough to perform and PC users are glad to get them done. PC users aren’t looking to do more thing, but are looking to do these things more easily. If they would get more comfortable, they would get the courage to start to do more interesting things.
I regularely help PC users when they need to do something that they never did before and I notice that confidence fades fast when I show how to do the things that needs to be done.
Doing the same kind of tasks on a Macintosh, e.g. manage your photo’s or even simply organising your documents, is a lot more exciting, even if these are the same dull little tasks that Windows users can perform just as well. Simple games, such as cardgames, look a lot better on a Mac even it is just another Solitair or FreeCell. Confidence is built sooner on a Macintosh and you’ll find yourself doing things that you couldn’t imagine doing yourself on a PC.
I think the message to Windows users should be: stop blaming yourself for not getting the most out of your computer. Buy a Mac and do things that you currently are only dreaming about.
The message in the ad comes very close to this.
Personally I like the ad. It basically says that you can now get a Mac with an Intel chip inside - something that might calm the fears of potential buyers who have never looked at a Mac.
All that a TV ad can do in selling Macs is put the product in front of the viewer. Years ago IBM ran ads talking about all of the neat stuff their OS/2 could do and it left the consumer numb with the technospeak. Didn’t help IBM at all, but then did the PC Jr.
To actually SELL a Mac the customer has to have some one who is knowledgeable on Macs at some level - be it a salesman or relative or friend. They need to be shown how easy it is to do the things they want to do on a computer.
They also appreciate the really neat stuff they can do on a Mac. When talking to an Apple rep at CompUSA in November he told me that Front Row was the main selling point in selling iMacs to PC users - and he was sold out.
The key to selling a Mac will be to find out what they need, be it Office for Mac, iLife or simply a safe way to use the internet with Safari.
The one option that Apple does have to reach the customers is to produce a DVD that will show the various features, such as iLife, in easy to understand terms that can be selected to review. Spend some of that space on J Ive’s comments about design. Have an interesting person talk about the reasons to switch - it’s on Apple’s web site, but will get greater exposure at home on a DVD.
If you have ads showing someone using a Mac then make sure it’s a kid in elementary school that actually uses a Mac in school. have them say, “Look at what I’ve done, Mommy”.
When I hear Jeff Goldblum solemnly intoning “dull little tasks”, my BS meter goes off the scale- games are the least dull thing going in software, and the mac has always lagged behind the PC due to market share. Any informed customer is going to know this.
In some ways, the promise of a triple boot mac is that finally we’ll be able to play the really great games- and still have a good unix-based OS for when we want to get work done. It’s an ironic reversal of this clueless ad’s point.
Man Steve should hire you Chris Seibold! I love that… “Starting today the Intel chip will get to power the most advanced operating system on earth: OS X.”
umm, i think the ad is being read into too much. Its just a lowly, dull, little commercial. All Apple is doing is trying to spin their use of Intel by clowning Window’s based computers.
Don’t think for a minute that Chiat/Day (or whoever made the spot) put all the thought that you and the commenters did. Its advertising fer cryin’ out loud. Once we take adverts that serious is a sad, sad day.
“Don’t think for a minute that Chiat/Day (or whoever made the spot) put all the thought that you and the commenters did. Its advertising fer cryin’ out loud. Once we take adverts that serious is a sad, sad day.”
If people didn’t take ads so serious, then why is it a multi-billion dollar industry? Companies will be practically going bananas to try to get their 30-second commercial shown during the upcoming Superbowl. Ads have become emotional objects that people get attached to. The wrong ad can make or break a company. All I’m saying is that it’s been a long time since Apple promoted their computers on television and you don’t want to begin again by insulting or driving away the very people that you’re trying to convince to buy your products. If people start to feel slighted by this, not only will they not buy computers from Apple, but they might decide to stop supporting the iPod. And then where would we be?
Man Steve should hire you Chris Seibold! I love that… “Starting today the Intel chip will get to power the most advanced operating system on earth: OS X.
Microsoft sells operating systems. Dell sells computers.
Apple sells a computing experience.
While Mac’s are powered by OS X, it’s one of many parts that make the entire experience. Unfortunately, not enough people know what Mac OS X to make it worth mentioning in a TV commercial.
It’s not Jeff Goldblum, it’s Kiefer Sutherland.
While I do agree that at a very small level, the voiceover may reinforce the divide between Mac users and PC users, I think the rest of the points are ridiculous, along with the people agreeing with them. The problem with you guys is that you have zero style. You don’t seem to appreciate the advertisement on any levels it is aspiring towards because you are focusing on function over form.
Yes, you can have an advertisment, which shows the function of the product (usually Microsoft ads,) but no way do I want to see 5 minute infomercials demo’ing OS X on the shopping channel. And I think Apple agree with me on this.
I’d take this commercial over that idea any day.
A: I completely agree that Apple should hire me. I can do landscaping work, janitorial stuff and light building repair.
B: If not many people know what OS X is I’d say that is precisely why it should be mentioned. The more people who know about OS X the better
and the mac has always lagged behind the PC due to market share. Any informed customer is going to know this.
I don’t mean to sound to hard on you, but you ask for it. I don’t see people going out and spending 2-3K on a 60” wide screen to play games so why do you do it on a computer. you want a gamer machine then but a gamer machine, but don’t base a computers ability fast or slow on playing video games, that just truly shows how much of a loser you are. Mac are work horses, dependable, no problems, yes occasionally email, surf the web and some fun time, but lets leave the gaming to a three hundred dollar game cube, play station, ect….. I’m really tired of that even being mentioned in a forum !
Geez Chris, lighten up a little bit. As a long-time ad exec and Apple user, I don’t feel quite as strongly or deeply about the ad. I thought it was funny and I wasn’t insulted.
If I’m hurt, it’s because I bought a new iMac two months ago and it has the “old technology.” That said, it’s super fast and does everything it is supposed to.
Apple will probably never be able to recapture the market share it had in the early days (similar to the iPod today), but their advertising has always been elegant and compelling ... unless you read too much into it.
Bernie