
Why Microsoft's "Scroogled" Campaign Is Childish - srathi
http://itechtriad.com/articles/2013/12/30/why-microsofts-scroogled-campaign-is-childish
======
aspir
Did anyone really need convincing that the Scroogled campaign was childish?
This campaign is so bad, it's going to be used in case studies for years to
come.

We're literally looking at history in the making with this campaign. If MSFT
declines in the coming years, this will be regarded as a signal of the
beginning of the end. If they improve, this will be regarded as a "darkest
before the dawn" moment. There are plenty of varying degrees of "bad," but
"historical-record bad" is what Scroogled is.

~~~
cies
I came here to say the same.

It seems that chrome books are sooo good that MS feels sooo scared that they
have lost all dignity, and now spend big money in a joke that is not funny but
actually quite revealing of their sad situation.

------
notacoward
Yes, the campaign is childish, but so are the article's misrepresentations.
For example:

(1) Google Docs - not Drive - does not have "nearly the same capabilities" as
Office by any reasonable definition. FFS, they don't even seem to have proper
support for custom paragraph styles, widow/orphan control, etc. There are
certainly ways in which Google Docs improves over Office, especially wrt
collaborative editing, but there are also _massive_ gaps that make it almost
unusable for anything medium-size or larger.

(2) Microsoft's characterization of Chromebooks as "useless without the
internet" is not entirely wrong. Constant internet connectivity might be the
norm everywhere the author has gone, but it's still not something one can rely
on in every corner of the globe. That being the case, "suitable for use while
traveling" really might not apply sometimes. By the author's own cited
definition, Chromebooks - like the one I'm typing this on - might not be real
laptops for many people.

In both cases, the author starts with a grain of truth and then destroys his
own point with exaggeration. The piece would have been far more effective if
he had stuck with the facts - which are damning enough - instead of letting
his bias shine through.

~~~
anologwintermut
Not to mention, a lot of marketing is childish. The Mac vs. PC ads were
childish. They worked ( to the extent anyone can say TV ads work)

~~~
sigsergv
Mac vs. PC campaign was also very ironic and inspiring (probably because it
suggests and proposes new features, new way of thinking), but MSFT campaign is
really stupid (if not worse, because it's merely portrays google in a negative
light).

------
derekp7
Well, in spite of the silliness of those commercials, lately I have been
creeped out when I start getting blasted by adverts from all over the web
based on something I recently searched on. Often times, I'll quickly look up
something / fact check what I've read in an article (most recently was
"longevity insurance" annuities and reverse mortgages), and now I'm getting a
whole bunch of ads aimed at older / retired people on many sites that I visit.
And these ads have nothing to do with me, except that I happened to fact-check
something a couple times. Kind of makes me want to re-think any of my web
searches, and do them in a private browsing window.

I can't really say why this bothers me -- maybe it is because I know that
their ad matching algorithm gave inaccurate results (so it grates on my OCD,
maybe?), or maybe it just feels like I'm being stalked by people trying to
sell me something.

~~~
pgrote
Is there a way to turn that off? I don't mind the adwords ads since they
sometimes help me find what I am looking for. They are useless, though, if
they display ads for things I've searched for in the past.

~~~
pak
If you're on Chrome (in which case there will be no lasting victories, only
small ones), there's this extension:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/iba-opt-out-by-
goo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/iba-opt-out-by-
google/gbiekjoijknlhijdjbaadobpkdhmoebb?hl=en)

This looks like it does the same thing for Firefox:
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/targeted-
adve...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/targeted-advertising-
cookie-op/)

There may be IBA opt-out extensions for other browsers. AFAICT all they do is
permanently block the DoubleClick and related cookies.

This, in combination with Adblock Plus, seems to do the job for me. There are
a lot of people complaining that the extensions don't work, but they probably
do not realize that these only block the collection of new data tied to your
browsing history, and not the display of the ads themselves, which is what you
need Adblock Plus for.

------
mikestew
Thanks, Captain Obvious. Now that we've established that the campaign is
childish, can we move on to the question of whether it's working? I viewed the
"Mac vs. PC" Apple ads to be a bit childish (and it's almost all Macs and iOS
at our house), but folks seemed to like them. Can the same be said for
"Scroogled"? Of the one or two I've seen, I think I'd go out of my way to
avoid the MSFT product out of spite. But that's just me. Maybe my judgement of
what people like is as poor as it was for the Apple campaign.

~~~
poopsintub
Exactly. Let's compare apples and oranges and make outrageous points that
don't even matter. My guess is that's what good marketing is.

------
jrochkind1
> _it was actually later proven that Bing brings many of its results from
> Google 's search engine_

What's he talking about? Making this claim without a cite is annoying. Making
copy-and-paste not work so I couldn't even copy and paste it here is even more
annoying.

~~~
throwawaykf03
Read both sides of the story rather than just Google's accusations:

[http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-
copying-...](http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-our-
search-results-62914)

[http://searchengineland.com/bing-why-googles-wrong-in-its-
ac...](http://searchengineland.com/bing-why-googles-wrong-in-its-
accusations-63279)

~~~
cbr
"Google alleges that Bing monitors what people search for on its site, if they
have Internet Explorer equipped with certain features. Bing doesn’t dispute
this. But Bing isn’t just monitoring what happens at Google. It monitors what
people do as they travel across the entire web."

I'd love to see that on the Scroogled page.

(I recognize that on the internet I have basically no privacy from people who
want to extract useful signals from my behavior. It sounds icky but in
practice it doesn't seem to be a problem and it's a huge pain to prohibit.
What bothers me is Microsoft pretending to be pro-privacy and anti-tracking
when it does the same kind of data collection and mining as everyone else.)

~~~
throwawaykf03
Users have to opt in to sharing click events with Bing for features like
suggested sites (" _if_ they have Internet Explorer equipped with certain
features"), and that's what they track. IMO, if users give permission, it's
fair game for MS to use that data -- that's still more of an option than what
most of the Internet gives users.

Also, AFAIK Hotmail (or live or outlook or whatever it's called now) does not,
and never has, targeted ads based on keywords in the email. I'm not that big
on privacy so I still use Gmail but at least MS is not being hypocritical in
that respect.

Bing search, on the other hand, does all the sorts of tracking and mining
Google (and Facebook etc.) does, but so far the Scroogled campaign hasn't said
anything about search.

------
computerslol
I found the ad hilarious. Google is an ad company. A brilliant ad company, but
still an ad company. As far as I know, this is something that is not on most
consumer's minds.

The scroogled ads are pretty good for microsoft standards.

My concern is less with the data collection, and more with the lack of native
application support. If it looks like a laptop, consumers like my parents will
think they found the best deal in the world when they come across it. I have
talked both of them out of buying one because it won't run the work
applications they need (they wanted to use it to replace their aging laptops).
If it was a tablet, I'd have no problem with it. Consumers are used to the
idea of tablets as toys (and don't expect them to run office and their
workplace's custom windows apps).

As a programmer, I really don't want another platform to write native apps
for; there are so many already. I'll learn it if they get enough market
penetration. I don't know enough about the native APIs for the chromebook; how
different is it to write a chromebook app than an android one? Is it web only?
Are you really cut off from any functionality if you aren't around wifi?

~~~
VLM
"how different is it to write a chromebook app than an android one?"

I almost bought my wife a chromebook for christmas, I researched this a bit
for fun. Might buy one for myself too.

Basically you google for "how to write chromebook app" (or Bing, LOL who am I
kidding no one uses bing) and eventually get to

[https://developers.google.com/chrome/apps/docs/index](https://developers.google.com/chrome/apps/docs/index)

You probably want "packaged app" which unsurprisingly turns out to be "how to
write a chrome browser app"

I thought it was all pretty interesting and have a few ideas to try.

"I really don't want another platform to write native apps for"

Careful careful, thats how cobol programmers and the like get stagnant and
then unemployable. I'm not saying dive in head first, but sticking a toe in to
see what the water is like, is perfectly reasonable. Go have some fun.

In practice, lets be realistic, its 2013 soon 2014, 99% of "apps" use web
pages as the presentation layer. I'm not going to write anything to use gmail
or hangouts or google drive or facebook or a bazillion other end user
applications. 99% of her time osx is just a Chrome bootloader for my wife, so
I'm thinking of moving it out of the way...

~~~
jasomill
Maybe so, but lots of people use the remaining 1% for most of their work, and
some of us _prefer_ the OS X (or Windows, or X11) desktop environment to the
browser for most applications. I sure do, though I also generally prefer well-
designed Web pages to native mobile apps for accessing information on the
Internet.

~~~
VLM
I totally get what you're saying, I'm just saying for the vast majority of
people who mostly live in a browser, "switching" into a browser doesn't have
much meaning because they're already there, this just works a little better
for them.

There exist a couple remote desktop apps, rdesktop rdp vnc whatever. And I
have a perfectly good virtualization compatible server in the basement, so in
the unlikely even she needed a "real" desktop, its not hard to remotely
access.

The biggest problem with chromebooks is the good ones are "always" sold out
and the bad ones have weird issues like the video drivers are not compatible
with normal codecs so do whatever you want as long as its not youtube /
netflix / prime video / whatever. And that is a problem. If you're sold out of
the good stuff, you don't need to buy advertising.

------
raganwald
This is the company that shamed its own customers by calling them "dinosaurs"
for not upgrading to new versions of Office. In a multi-million dollar
advertising campaign.

When it comes to their marketing, absolutely nothing surprises me any more.

------
throwawaykf03
1\. According to MS, this campaign came out of a survey where something like
45+% of users _didn 't know_ Gmail scans their emails, and 80+% of those
didn't approve of it (I think this is the survey
[http://www.scribd.com/doc/124257005/GfK-Email-Privacy-
Report](http://www.scribd.com/doc/124257005/GfK-Email-Privacy-Report)). That's
a pretty significant number of users.

2\. The "I'm a Mac" campaign was childish, and even though I was predominantly
on Windows then and the ads were so very wrong, I laughed along at them.
Similarly, I'm primarily a Gmail user, but that GmailMan character is
hilarious.

3\. However the campaign appears to us, apparently it's working?!
[http://adage.com/article/digital/microsoft-s-google-
bashing-...](http://adage.com/article/digital/microsoft-s-google-bashing-tv-
campaign-working/244691/)

On the other hand, some doubt if that's really translating into commercial
success: [http://marketingland.com/microsoft-scroogled-
campaign-61887](http://marketingland.com/microsoft-scroogled-campaign-61887)

~~~
dragonwriter
> According to MS, this campaign came out of a survey where something like
> 45+% of users didn't know Gmail scans their emails, and 80+% of those didn't
> approve of it

You think when they brought veteran political campaign pollster Mark Penn [1]
to run the anti-Google campaign, he brought political-campaign-style negative
ads but left the push polls [2] at home?

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Penn](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Penn)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_poll](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_poll)

~~~
throwawaykf03
Right, and I guess this is the result of a push poll too:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/technology/google-
accused-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/technology/google-accused-of-
wiretapping-in-gmail-scans.html?_r=0)

------
ChuckMcM
Warning Rant mode:

Wow, that is an insanely monetized blog. Does anyone else see random works
linking to search ads and if you select something you get a search query ad?

The content is also pretty muddy. In my opinion Microsoft's campaign isn't
childish, it's just lame. Does Google do all these things? Of course they do,
it makes them billions of dollars a quarter. Does it bother Microsoft that
they can't seem to get away with the same kinds of things? Of course it does,
their search ads monetize at 1/3 to 1/5th the rate that Google's do. Would
they like someone other than folks who understand how search works to "get"
this ? Sure.

But that is the same battle animal rights people have trying to convince egg
eaters that the eggs came out of tortured chickens. At one level it may be
true, and at a much larger level it may be totally irrelevant to the consumer.

So where does that put the OP who is trying exploit Microsoft's strategy to
pick up some AdSense coin out of Google? Does he care? Really? His subtext is
"Hey we're all gettin' rich here off the Goog, Microsoft. Go whine somewhere
else." Heck Google doesn't particularly care about their search results at the
level where this is being argued, they only care that they are tasty enough to
lure enough eyeballs to feed their customers, the advertisers. If they get
less tasty they will fix them, if someone gets mouthy about whether or not
their content should be considered tasty they will fix them too.

There is web search _technology_ which is one thing, and there is web search
_the business_ which is a completely different thing. Confusing them will make
it hard to reason coherently about them.

------
Blahah
Do we really need an article to explain why it's childish? It's face-
slappingly, consumer-insultingly childish.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
Mostly hypocritical, however.

"Look at how Google is spying on you! Here at Microsoft, we totally don't do
such shenanigans. I swear on me mum, mate!"

~~~
katcooke
The specific claim that they don't track users by phrases inside the texts of
their emails does check out.

~~~
jedmeyers
Who checked it? A "1 hour ago registered" astroturfer?

------
marknutter
It's also somewhat insidious. I was watching my local morning news show when
the anchors cut to a segment featuring a "tech reporter in Washington D.C."
who was going to give advice about buying tech gifts for the holiday season.
Laid out on the table were a bunch of Microsoft products and the reporter
proceeded to spew a hit piece aimed squarely at Chromebooks. Never was there
any indication that it was a sponsored story but it was clearly a Microsoft
backed segment. It was truly bizarre. I don't know how often companies pay
news shows to pimp their stuff but I've never seen anything that blatant
before.

~~~
VLM
The phrase you need to google for, err, I mean bing (LOL just kidding) is
"Video News Release"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_news_release](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_news_release)

Its not new, although they've been growing in popularity for decades. I could
see a stream of nothing but VNRs eventually replacing TV infotainment as we
know it today.

------
ef47d35620c1
I recently bought a laptop for my daughter this Christmas. I considered all
makes and models and finally decided on a Dell running Windows 8. I looked
closely at Chrome Books, but felt she would be at a disadvantage without
Windows and Office. It cost more than the Chrome Books, but I felt it was the
right choice. She can still use Google services if she likes and MS software
and services as well. I thought it was the best, most versatile choice. Just
my own personal experience, I can see the value in Chrome Books too.

------
solve
> it was actually later proven that Bing brings many of it results from
> Google's Search engine

This turned out to be a lie, right?

~~~
nn3
IIRC it turned out to be a side effect of their "toolbar" data collection. If
most people using googles toolbar would use bing they would see a similar
effect. But calling it "they get search results from google" is stretching the
truth. Of course why anyone would submit all their surf history to any of
those big brother companies (M or G) in the first place is a complete mystery.

But overall bing is not too bad. It's a quite respectable search search engine
on its own right. It's not quite as good as google, but I use it regularly to
work around some google misfeatures. What really annoys me in google is that
you cannot cutnpaste PDF urls from search result. I'm sure there is some
workaround, but it's easier to just temporarily switch to bing in the search
bar to solve it (and it typically finds the same thing) bing seems to also
have less spam.

~~~
katcooke
Ironically, Google's own toolbar(which was bundled by OEMs who took money from
Google), sent people's web site visits even after configuring it to say no.

[http://www.benedelman.org/news/012610-1.html](http://www.benedelman.org/news/012610-1.html)

~~~
jedmeyers
Ironically, a lot of new accounts appeared on HN lately posting claims against
Microsoft competitors and telling stories about how a new Surface Pro helped
them do their engineering studies homework.

------
magicalist
If you really think that, giving it more attention isn't a great way to combat
it. I'm sure they knew full well that there was going to be some negative
reaction, but that the trade off for brand awareness (so much free coverage of
their ad campaign) and introducing some level of doubt in some consumers'
minds was worth it (see: negative political attack ads, Mark Penn, etc).

(and bringing up Bing copying Google's search results, and the ad campaign
backfiring and somehow leading to chromebook sales isn't going to lend itself
to a non-stupid HN discussion)

------
slm_HN
Microsoft's Scroogled campaign is hilarious.

Crying about Microsoft's Scroogled campaign is childish.

------
praptak
"Scroogled" is used by Googlers ironically as in "Scroogled again: only three
flavors of soy-free vegan whipped cream in the cafeteria today!"

------
code_duck
I like the "wearables" response also.

>When asked about the shirts, Google said that they "are very interested in
Microsoft's latest venture. The wearables market is becoming very
competitive".

This could be taken as a reference to Google Glass. MS and their vendors don't
seem to have anything near ready to show to compete with Glass, but apparently
they're on top of the T-shirt game.

------
chasing
Scroogled. Office 365. Surface. Xbox One. Microsoft's marketing seems to be
remarkably tone-deaf across-the-board.

------
jeremiep
I never understood companies who spend millions in marketing to promote their
software rather than spending that money on improving said software.

Why not just build great software that speaks for itself rather than try to
manipulate your potential customers with high risks of backfire, as in this
case.

~~~
tarblog
Diminishing returns. More money on R&D helps, but not as much as spending some
on advertising.

------
dsugarman
It may be childish but Apple's similar childish campaign completely destroyed
Microsoft's brand.

------
PetrolMan
I think I'd be less bothered by the campaign if they weren't selling
merchandise. For some reason, that seems to be the tipping point for me. The
campaign is idiotic and now seemingly hypocritical but the attempt to market
merchandise just feels weirdly desperate.

------
bdcravens
More or less childish than Samsung commercials who associate the iPhone with
brainless caricatures standing in line?

------
ThoreauAway
was it just me, or were the comments on that story unreadable until
highlighted?

------
mortyseinfeld
Great. I hope Microsoft goes after Google even more. SkyDrive blows away
GDrive. Windows tablets are coming into their own right, while Android is
pretty much "meh" these days. Google flails away aimlessly with their chromeOS
strategy, all the while doing lots of evil (with Eric Schmidt on the board
still how can it not).

~~~
aspir
If Microsoft products are truly better than Google/Apple, they should move the
conversation to those products, rather than discussing their competitors. I
hear more about Chromebooks from this campaign than I do from Google's own
ads.

~~~
dragonwriter
> If Microsoft products are truly better than Google/Apple, they should move
> the conversation to those products, rather than discussing their
> competitors.

If they were, they would be.

> I hear more about Chromebooks from this campaign than I do from Google's own
> ads.

And the main thing I hear from this campaign is that Microsoft is desperately
afraid that I might by a Chromebook.

