
I’m a PC, and I Write Blog Entries - sant0sk1
http://mattmaroon.com/?p=486
======
SwellJoe
For what it's worth, I worked in television while in college, running the tape
machines, and various behind the scenes stuff. From the perspective of TV
stations, a new spot can definitely go online within 24 hours (usually less).
The actual time is generally already bought and paid for months in advance...
_but_ there's always time available for the right price. Anytime you see an ad
for a show or movie or event for the station itself (e.g. "Watch Friends every
day at 6 and 8 PM"), that is a spot that is for sale, for the right price,
until the day the spot runs.

Here's how it worked from a technical perspective ten, or so, years ago, when
I worked in the industry:

Ads come in automatically via satellite twice per day, in big batches of 20-40
spots. They are automatically recorded onto a single tape (a computer was put
online for this a few weeks before I left the station--it was a different ad
distribution company, I believe, and so only a few ads were running off of
this system, so I'm not deeply familiar with it, but it was _fully_ automated,
with no human intervention required to go from ad network to air). The single
tape was then processed by a tape operator (me) onto individual tapes, and
labeled with a barcode, for use in the master control automated tape loader.
Turnaround time was usually an hour or two from the usual spot feed, and the
spots were usually airing by the next day.

When an ad had a mistake, a special feed would be scheduled...sometimes within
hours of the mistake being found and the ad producer being notified. A new
version of the ad could definitely be online the same day. With the automated
computer system, I suspect it could be replaced in minutes.

 _However_ , spot production is a somewhat different story. Depending on the
size of the production, it could take weeks to schedule all of the pieces to
fall into place. That said, with enough money and enough muscle (which
Microsoft has in spades), a large scale production could be done in days or
even hours.

To put things further into perspective, the station I worked for (WB 39 in
Houston) also had a production division, and would occasionally make spots
practically in real-time for local advertisers to tie into ongoing events like
Rockets games. Adding running commentary of the game to spots, by the usual
spokesperson for the company (like Mattress Mac), was a reasonably common
practice. If Microsoft _really_ wanted to change directions fast, they could
do it. It'd cost them two or three times as much (if they were a normal
customer...though their agency may have eaten some of the cost just to keep MS
happy through these trying times and the perceived disaster that is the spots
they'd already produced), and the agency would have to re-schedule other
customers productions (or pay lots of overtime), but it could definitely be
done.

------
jcl
_You can’t simply start making five ads with Jerry Seinfeld, start airing
them, decide you don’t like them after a week, film a new ad, and switch the
old one out and the new one in within 7 days._

I'm pretty sure you can. Most advertising agencies present multiple options to
their clients and variations thereon, so Microsoft likely had half a dozen
half-fleshed-out ideas they could have followed in addition to the Seinfeld
one. And, yes, producing an ad could take a long time, but it could also take
a very short time, depending on what is needed and how much money you are
willing to throw at it. Every day, news networks come up with hours of
professionally produced graphics, interviews, and reports, with lead times
varying from a few days to a matter of minutes.

------
raganwald
_I think there’s a very good chance that we’re seeing the sort of marketing
campaign that will be studied in universities for years to come. I’m not sure
which way it will go. It might be looked back upon as the spark that ignited a
massive resurgence and a prime example of one of the all time great ad
agencies at the peak of their game. Or it might go down as act of hubris on
par with Gigli but with ten times the budget_

Matt, I think you may be onto something there. Things in front of us always
seem bigger than they really are, but when they went from M$10 on Jerry
Seinfeld to directly responding to the "I'm a PC" commercials, this went from
being another M$300 ad spend to a very high stakes gamble.

When they were doing the Seinfeld thing, it could have been a defensive move.
They solidify their support with their core market, and Apple's ads solidify
their support with Apple's core market. It stops and further switching, but
creates a stable stalemate with Microsoft maintaining huge market share and
continuing to farm its customers for upgrade revenue.

But directly responding to the Apple ads changes things. Now it's a kind of
winner-take-all strategy. If they succeed, they could reverse the trend and
win customers and mind share back. But if they fail, they accelerate the
defection and actually get their own customers talking about Apple's
advertising!

If Microsoft spends any serious money on this "I'm a PC" series, I don't see
this ending in a stable stalemate. One or the other is going to win out. It
"I'm a PC" flops, Microsoft looks very, very bad and validates Apple's
advertising. Of course, if it succeeds it could undermine everything Apple has
worked on and claw back their gains.

So... I would have to say that before canning Jerry this was not going to be a
B-School case study. But now that the #1 player with 90+% of the market is
breaking all the rules by referencing a competitor's advertising...

Yeah, I see this as a B-School case study no matter how it plays out.

------
aneesh
Matt's right. A "Vista rocks" ad wouldn't be talked about this much. Case in
point: see Mojave experiment a month ago -- all Vista, limited success.

Even more than fixing Vista's problems, Microsoft needs to get back mindshare
& brand that it has been losing to "cooler" competitors like Apple & Google.
Microsoft wants to be talked about. And that takes a lot more guts than saying
"Vista rocks". To their credit, they recognize that.

------
cstejerean
"Most of the people counting them out aren’t the target audience."

Microsoft kept dismissing people switching to Linux and OS X as not being in
their target audience. But I think PG said it best in
<http://www.paulgraham.com/mac.html>

"Who cares if hackers like Apple again? How big is the hacker market, after
all?

Quite small, but important out of proportion to its size. When it comes to
computers, what hackers are doing now, everyone will be doing in ten years."

Unfortunately I didn't read that essay back in 2005.

[http://finance.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chd...](http://finance.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chdet=1220472000000&chddm=343032&q=NASDAQ:AAPL&ntsp=0)

------
webwright
The ad progress was freakin' brilliant. Bizarre ads got EVERYONE talking about
Microsoft again, whether you liked them or not. The followup ads ("I'm a PC")
were less remarkable, but people paid attention a lot more because of the
initial grabber-ads with Seinfeld.

And, as Arrington said in a post today-- the "I'm a PC" ads made the Mac ads
seem less funny and more arrogant. It had a great, "Fuck you, I'm not lame
just because I don't use a Mac" quality and I think will nudge people to be
proud of using a PC.

FWIW, I use a PC and I generally feel pretty content about it. I paid $400 for
a great box on Craigslist. I can play games from time to time. I don't get
viruses. My computer doesn't crash/freeze. I've watched my Mac buddies
recently have a LOT more frequent hardware issues than I do (tho Apple is
admittedly great at dealing with it when it happens).

My computer has no white plastic, no rounded corners, aliased fonts and I love
it. :-)

------
unalone
It's not exactly fair to call John Gruber a "Mac fanboy" and dismiss him at
that. He's got a point with his postings: Microsoft touted Seinfeld for a LONG
time and then dropped him after two weeks. They announced this not from the ad
firm they hired but from their PR department, which is indicative of the fact
that this wasn't a decision straight from the firm. That all leads to the
conclusion that Microsoft is slightly panicking. Considering how adamant
Gruber is AGAINST things that Apple does that he DOESN'T like, I think it's
fair to say that he has a reputation for being fair-minded. And, you know, if
a ton of fair-minded people like one product (Apple), perhaps there's a logic
behind their liking it. You never know. It's possible. ;-)

As for your saying that this is good because it can't be understood: I'm going
to call BS. Being deliberately vague never works for anybody. The ads WERE
understandable (hey, guys, Bill Gates is pretty cool, and we're not a faceless
empire!), so your point doesn't quite work, but things that you can't
understand are either things you can LEARN to understand or they're poorly
done. Simple as that.

~~~
mattmaroon
Lol. Bill O'Reilly often points out some minor gripe he has with a
conservative and uses that to tout how unbiased and moderate his views are.
And his viewers lap it up. What you said about Gruber is the same thing.

Which is not to say that I do (or anyone should) simply dismiss his arguments
because of that. He is a fanboy, in fact, he's the closest thing to a leader
they have. If he told his readers to march on Washington, there'd be a million
Priuses (or is it Prii?) with Apple bumper stickers clogging the expressways
in every state. I'm truly impressed that he's made such a career out of it,
but if you don't think that the fact that most of his income is derived from
blogging about how great Apple is taints his views, you're simply and
obviously wrong.

Here's a thought experiment. Suppose you were Microsoft, and you made a series
of ads, planning the first two and possibly a third to be with Jerry Seinfeld
(pending reception of the first two) and the rest with lesser celebrities or
none at all. Would you not still hype them up for a couple months beforehand?
I mean, you just hired possibly the biggest celebrity in TV history to do your
TV ads. You wouldn't be issuing press releases, even if it were just for the
first two weeks of a year-long campaign? I would.

So then, suppose they get a highly mixed reception and you continue on with
your original plan of switching to the other ones. People start asking you
why. What do you tell them?

They answered through their PR department because that's who questions to
Microsoft (or any large corporation) go to. The PR department. That's the
point of a PR department, to be the liaison between the company and the press.

CPB group's job is not to talk to reporters on Microsoft's behalf, and it
would be unusual if they were the ones issuing press releases and statements
on Microsoft's behalf.

~~~
unalone
You used "fanboy" like a negative term when you referred to Gruber. The name
has negative connotations. Here you dismiss him again by calling him a "fanboy
leader" and generalizing against Apple users and Gruber readers. People read
his stuff not because he constantly supports Mac, but because he's a good
writer, he finds good links, and he tends to be pretty honest about how he
feels. I read him before I was a Mac user, and it was the things that he
pointed out that made me certain that I wanted a Mac. I don't think that's
fanboyish of him, though: he honestly pointed out interesting stuff, and he
never acts with a bias towards Apple, beyond the bias of them working well for
him. If Apple does a bad job, he points it out.

I'm not digging your style, I must say. Comparing my point to Bill O'Reilly's
style is pretty distorted. My point - that if a lot of smart people are also
big Apple people, that Apple may actually be making the best products - is
hardly irrational. I don't know why you've got a problem against Apple, or why
you like tinting every lens in favor of Microsoft, but it's not pleasant and
most of your posts have things in them that seem sneering towards things I
genuinely like. Apparently your big web site is also a blog that got famous
for being offensive, so that's no big surprise, but at the same time you'll
forgive me from finding it a bit immature of you.

You think Microsoft only had three ads planned? You think they dropped only a
single ad? Citation? And if they DID overadvertise Seinfeld for only a few
ads, I'd say that was a bad move on Microsoft's part.

~~~
mattmaroon
I'm not dismissing him. But he makes his living by writing a blog that Apple
fans read. No offense, but if you believe he is unbiased despite that, you're
naive.

I don't have any particular love for Microsoft or loathing for Apple. I really
don't care. I don't like the fanboy mindset that's pervaded the tech media,
where Apple can do no wrong and Microsoft no right. I see Apple fans routinely
criticize Microsoft for the DRM in Vista (which affects the 8 people who have
a Vista PC with BluRay hooked up to an HDTV but not through an HDMI connection
that supports HDCP) but not Apple (who has done more to promote and benefit
from DRM than anyone by a factor of 1,000) and I call bullshit on it. If
that's offensive or immature, then I'm OK with that.

My blog is neither famous nor big. I don't make any money at all from
promoting Microsoft. Gruber, on the other hand, makes money from being an
Apple fanatic. And of course, that doesn't mean that he can't form a coherent
argument, but it does mean that you need to take whatever he says about
Microsoft with a grain of salt.

I do think Microsoft dropped at most 1 Seinfeld ad. My citation would be
Microsoft's and Crispin Porter + Bogusky's statements to the press. Not to
mention the fact that he took Microsoft's response to the press coming through
their PR agency (whose main job it is to respond to press on their behalf) to
be any sort of proof of anything.

Where's your citations, other than baseless illogical heresay on fanboy blogs?

~~~
unalone
I think that there's a difference between a bias and outright fanboyism. I've
met Apple fanboys: they're not fun. They take the thing that I love about
Apple users (the generally rational mindset) and make it look dumb. Gruber's
not one of those people. Does he like Mac? Of course. But I think he likes it
because they genuinely please him, not because he's getting paid to like them.

You're allowed to call bullshit on Apple fans who act like hypocrites. Apple
fans who attack DRM without calling attention to iTunes are being stupid. At
the same time, ignoring the fact that Apple's got more DRM-free music than any
other store, last I checked, is ignoring the fact that Apple is TRYING to
allow for open systems insofar as it doesn't ruin a business deal. But DRM
isn't the issue here, and I don't see why that's being brought up.

Your initial stance against Gruber's reaction was a sneering one, though. I
mean, those Seinfeld ads really didn't push much for Vista. They were well-
made shots, but you've been saying repeatedly that they're possibly going to
revolutionize advertising and make history. I think that's illogical just as
you seem to think disliking those ads were illogical.

When I read blogs, I take their arguments at face value. If I'm reading an
argument from Apple itself, if that argument makes sense then I'll agree with
it until other proof comes up. Similarly, if somebody who's usually big on
Apple turns around and starts praising Linux or Windows, I don't think they're
more credible because it's such a big change. Unless their reasoning is good,
I'll still call BS.

I didn't see the part in their statement where they said they had only dropped
a single ad. I don't recall seeing that anywhere. If you've got a link to
that, or even the site you found it on, then tell me and I'll give it a look.
But I still hold that their having only two ads seems pretty lackluster and
looks like they're panicking, even though I acknowledge the fact that there
might be more reasoning behind them. I think that the terrible phase two that
we're seeing continues that trend.

What would you like me to cite? Anything you think I said that isn't
rationally thought-out I'll try to clarify. I will point out, though, that
your responding to my accusations by using yet more weasel words really
doesn't make you seem particularly more believable.

~~~
mattmaroon
I read on TechCrunch (and scores of other places) that Microsoft said that
this has been their plan all along.

[http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/17/its-over-for-
seinfeld-b...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/17/its-over-for-seinfeld-but-
crispin-porter-keeps-microsoft-business/)

Gizmodo says that CP+B confirms there was one produced that hasn't aired, but
may later, along with others yet to be produced:

[http://gizmodo.com/5051682/microsoft-ads-featuring-bill-
gate...](http://gizmodo.com/5051682/microsoft-ads-featuring-bill-gates-and-
jerry-seinfeld-not-canceled)

There you go. Got anything to the contrary that isn't baseless hearsay like
"Microsoft's questions from the press were replied to by their public
relations agency, ergo they are panicking"?

Surely you must admit now that Gruber's logic there was deeply flawed.

~~~
unalone
Gotcha. I hadn't seen either of those two stories. Thanks for the links!

And yeah. Flawed logic following those two stories. I still think Microsoft's
campaign is questionable at best, but at least it looks like they're still
proceeding as per plan.

------
yaj
The new ads by Microsoft are good.

What will be better is how Apple will respond to the ads.

------
captain-m
I like Seth Godin's take on the ads:

"[...] Vista and PowerPoint and Microsoft's other core non-game products are
largely devoid of personality and are optimized to be sold to organizations
that prefer it that way. Microsoft can change this if they want to, but until
they do, running ads pretending to be something other than that is a waste of
money."

[http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/09/what-
adverti...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/09/what-
advertisin.html)

------
agentbleu
"Opinions seem to be wide-ranging, and of course your day wouldn’t be complete
unless you heard mine. "

HAHAHA

