“Vista” Means Always Having to Say You’re Sorry
You can’t put frosting on manure, although Microsoft seems intent on doing just that with its new Vista ad campaign. During a keynote address at Microsoft’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference, Brad Brooks, Microsoft’s vice president of Windows Vista consumer marketing, admitted that Vista hasn’t met with the success for which the company had hoped, and he acknowledged that it was partially to blame for that. “We broke a lot of things. We know that, and we know it caused you a lot of pain. It got customers thinking, hey, is Windows Vista a generation we want to get invested in,” Brooks said.
Apparently, Windows Vista isan operating system consumers should invest in–at least according to Microsoft, which apparently views the OS’s failure as one of marketing and not technology. But there are those who disagree, particularly one snarky competitor who’s been mercilessly taunting Microsoft (MSFT) in a high-profile ad campaign for quite some time now. And so to silence them, or perhaps groan loud enough to drown them out, Microsoft is launching a $300 million ad campaign to explain why Vista doesn’t stink to the many folks convinced that it does. “We’ve got a pretty noisy competitor out there,” Brooks said referring to Apple (AAPL) and its biting “I’m a Mac … you’re a dork” commercials. “You know it. I know it. It’s caused some impact. We’re going to start countering it. They tell us it’s the iWay or the highway. We think that’s a sad message.”
Not nearly as sad as proposing to fix technology problems with advertising.
[Image Credit: Worth1000]
Comments
I’ve been using Vista for 2 years - early beta through all the RC. Suffered through all the incompatibilities and bugs. I liked it better than XP. The latest Vista SP1 update won’t go on because Microsoft says there is a lot of leftover registry entries that they will not clean up. Only choice is to reformat the drive and reinstall - and having to reinstall 80+ applications (that ain’t going to happen!) You’d think if Microsoft was serious they would take care of the early users and keep as as evangelists. Yes, their problem is marketing - open wide and swallow because you don’t have any other choice. It doesn’t feel good.
Posted by Tom Politowski at July 9th, 2008 at 8:04 amVista and Zune-a legacy to remember.
Posted by David Owens at July 9th, 2008 at 8:13 amI am sorry John but I have also used Windows Vista since RC through to RTM and I have never had any problems with the OS or application compatibility and I am running it on a 3 year old Dell Dimension 9100 with a single hyper threaded CPU, 4Gb ram and NVidia GTX7800 256Mb video card.
The only problem I have ever had was with Creative drivers for my Audigy 2ZS Sound card. Creative wouldn’t release any decent drivers unlike NVidia who have been awesome so Daniel_K hacked them, made them available online and satisfied us!
I agree that Microsoft has dropped the marketing ball but Microsoft does not sell PC’s (hardware) and does not own the channel like Apple does. So, it is much easier for a vertically integrated company like Apple to market itself. Microsoft has only ever done launch based marketing not relationship and life time value based marketing. The average Joe isn’t really buying a Mac because it is technically superior or inferior to a Windows based PC from someone like Lenovo or Dell, they are buying a marketing experience - which happens to be better than what the manufacturers are offering.
All that is happened is that conversations happened, opinions were formed, perceptions were made and then people like you continue to spread the negative sentiment.
Today’s consumer is totally unforgiving and with the conversational marketing age it is easy to spread negative sentiment whether based on fact or fiction or just opinion and this is the case with Vista.
Microsoft has not done any serious marketing since the initial launch and ultimately PC manufacturers have dropped the ball against Apple.
Posted by Martin Walsh at July 10th, 2008 at 3:40 amVista, both Ultimate and Business, is the weakest operating system that Microsoft has launched since DOS 2.0, and I have used them all. In fact, it was continuing struggles with a top of the line Sony Vaio pre-loaded with Vista Business, and a high end HP pre-loaded with with Vista Ultimate, that finally pushed me into the Mac camp (and a simple Black MacBook to boot).
It’s not simply hardware incompatibilities. Vista is unstable and subject to the “molasses effect” that within 2-4 weeks of ownership the entire system will begin to slow down, take forever to shut down and restart, and randomly crash. We are talking about 2+ ghz Core 2 Duo systems, 2gb ram, 320gb hard drives and discreet graphics. I have reinstalled Vista on both systems 2 times (including fresh software installs), and within 2-4 weeks its back to the same slogging through wet cement problem. Both systems are protected by standard office grade virus and malware suites, and still the constant slowdowns and restarts.
Now a little over 100 days on the MacBook, with MS Office 2008, and no slowdowns or shutdowns. It is every bit as fast as when I took it out of the box. I use it in a full MS Exchange office environment, including VPN from home with no hiccups. Unbelievably, I can close the screen, unplug the Samsung 22″ monitor, ethernet, firewire Time Machine, and USB hub (with HP Laser), go home and open the lid and connect to my wireless network with all my programs back on the notebook screen…AND…the next morning do the reverse and be back up and running with all my peripherals, and never shutting down or powering off. As a PC user of primarily notebooks since a 1986 Toshiba 1100 plus, I can honestly state no Microsoft OS has been able to do this without freezing.
Mr. Paczkowski is not “continuing to spread the negative sentiment” - it is Microsoft’s fault with its release of continually buggy and suspect software. Mr. Gates as much as admitted this by his recent and ongoing Windows 7 revelations. Only Microsoft could believe that a marketing campaign could substitute for good coding. They’d be better off putting that $300,000,000 into R&D for SP2.
Posted by Dale Strauss at July 22nd, 2008 at 1:44 pmAlthough I am both a Mac and PC user, preferring all things Apple since the first Macintosh, I wish the best for MSFT and have made a bundle on their stock over the (not recent) years. They’ve been a GREAT company.
But in more recent years, they’ve made a classic business blunder by chasing Google and Yahoo, search and the iPod, and the like….all taking concentration away from their core businesses, Windows and Office.
Though I’m a confirmed Fanboy, its sad for me to see such a great company so lacking of coherent direction from the top.
Hope I’m proved wrong, but the upcoming ad campaign is most likely another horrible, misdirected response to losing their way.
There is no tougher competitor than Apple, and they can be expected to continue to take advantage of MSFTs misfortunes. Only MSFT can change that by re-concentrating on their core business. MSFTs ad campaign is *very* likely to backfire, making them a laughing-stock. A quick parody by the Mac guy is probable.
Posted by Bill Tallent at July 22nd, 2008 at 2:58 pmCan anyone provide a link to a high-res frameable version of the above and/or convince Apple to make it available as a poster?
It’s beautifully done and very neatly sums up (in exactly one frame) not only what could be the end of an era, but why.
MS, how about a REAL Vista Coke vs Pepsi challenge where you invite users to bring any supported hardware running XP, with any combination of applications that runs on XP, for a public upgrade to Vista and Office 7 (why would you do one without the other?).
Come to think of it, it would also be a really fun thing to start on U-Tube. “My Vista Upgrade”. “My Office 7 Upgrade”. Wow. What a great way to showcase just how well the products really work.
Hey, you were the ones clearly needing marketing ideas. I was just looking for that cool Apple poster.
Posted by JeanAnn Honaker at July 31st, 2008 at 9:59 pm