So some short thoughts. Plenty of people have been criticising both the Seinfeld+Gates ads and now the crowdsourced variant of “I’m a PC.” I’ve only really read three points of view, namely Micheal Arrington’s (a media guy), John Gruber’s (a Mac-head), and Jason Kottke’s (an (alternative internet-)culture guy). All three have been fairly negative about it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkZdkHylJ3w&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1]

Jason writes:

“That’s the problem with Microsoft’s ads. They’re still #1 and the bigger company, but by referencing Apple’s successful ad campaign, they’re acting like Apple is #1.”

I think this pretty much echoes John’s point of view.

The problem here is that both treat PCs as being one market… the Apple-one, which is students, “stupid users (like me) who don’t want to know what’s under the hood,” and a certain type of individualistic professional. In that market, yes, Apple appears to be doing quite well.

Microsoft has a somewhat different segmentation of customers. It has the three above, it also has the cheapskate (those that have it pre-installed with a $400 PC or those that pirate it), the business-traveller, and the Dell-crowd (lot’s and lot’s of grey machines in big equally grey buildings).

What has Microsoft done with the “I’m a PC” advert? It has attacked a strong player in one segment that it and Apple are both competing for. Apple’s “I’m a Mac” has been promoting Macs as the easy and elegant solution, while Microsoft-PCs are the clunky and slightly psychotic alternative that nobody wants. By showing a diverse set of PC-users, Microsoft simply removed the foundation that Apple built this last year and a half, and has levelled the playing-field.

Is it a me-too ad? Definitely! But we all know about Apple by now and there’s no use pretending it doesn’t exist. Will it affect Apple’s bottom-line? I’m not much of a believer in advertising, but at the very least Apple will have to change their game. I think that Micheal Arrington makes a similar point here.

Does this have any effect at all on Microsoft’s no. 1 market, the Dell-one? It does if you believe that students, “stupid users,” and individualistic professionals will bring about a revolution in the work-place, which may happen eventually. In the short-to-medium term (the one the stock-market cares most about) however, my gut tells me that all of this is pretty irrelevant to that business-only segment, which cares about creating products that work on a massive scale, and about buying PCs that become cheaper with economies of scale.

Vincent

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