

Really? Windows Phone 7 Commercials - devmonk
http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/Really-New-Windows-Phone-7-commercials-rock/1286834703

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siglesias
This commercial is a bait and switch, and as is common with ads by Crispin
Porter & Bogusky, they rely on subtle psychological ploys to effectively
influence your thinking.

The ad grabs your attention by highlighting the various ways in which society
has become addicted to constantly checking information that resides in mobile
devices. Several of the scenes deliberately emphasize activities in which
another party is left deprived by someone using a phone. The most striking
image to me was a father playing see-saw with his daughter, but we also have a
game of catch, a neglected wife showing off lingerie, a neglected girlfriend
during dinner. The scenes, and their inherent problems, are readily accessible
and, importantly, _relatable_ to our every day experiences. Lots of
girlfriends in the house are nodding.

So now it has seduced you into agreeing with its premise, and you kind of
wonder how the commercial proposes to fix it. Cell phones are bad. And then,
at the very end, they propose a solution! Yes! We have been waiting for it.
The tagline: "It's time for our phones to save us from our phones. New Windows
Phone 7. Designed to get you in, and out, and back to life." YES! Wait, or is
it a solution?

If we go back to the original montage building up to the release, the
solution, note that what is being highlighted is the TACT of using a phone in
particular situations, NOT, as the end implies, some kind of difficult to
navigate software that makes information too lengthy a process to access. Have
you ever checked email during dinner with a girlfriend on an iPhone or
Android? How long does it take to glance at the new messages? 5 seconds? 7
tops? Guess what, she still disapproves. Same with the bedroom situation. If
you think about it, the commercial, the first time you see it, seduces you
into agreeing with the premise not that the phone takes too long to use, but
that it doesn't belong in a bedroom! That it shouldn't be whipped out during a
game of catch!

In short, the commercial highlights a common problem that it fails to solve.
It presents the solution in a grammar that almost solves the problem, but then
if you think about it more deeply, utterly fails to solve that problem. Put
another way, if Windows Phone 7 does solve the time access problem, the
commercial utterly fails to provide any evidence that it succeeds in doing so,
because it highlights something else.

By not really featuring the product in any substantive way, the ad agency is
showing that it can't figure out how to differentiate the product.

~~~
snprbob86
What really strikes me, is just how simple Apple's iPhone ads really are. They
can be summarized in one sentence:

"Look how freaking cool our phone is!"

This ad was entertaining, but as far as ads go, it's truly awful. My reaction
was "yeah, I do check my phone too much. If I didn't have a business to run,
my next phone would be a POS without any features."

The flying phone tiles, the "save us from our phones", etc. All lost in the
much larger message of "PUT THE PHONE DOWN ASSHOLE". This would have been a
great public service announcement for spending more time with your family.

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d_r
A reader comment from the linked BetaNews page describes it well.

 _Microsoft's marketing people must have sat around a table and pondered what
features they could possibly promote about Windows Phone 7.

They couldn't really promote its use for office work, as then people would
realize that the phone can't copy-paste text, making it unsuitable for the
task.

They can't promote apps, as it is dwarfed by Android and iPhone (where did
those Angry Birds go?).

So the marketing people chose to promote the default front screen with its
blue tiles as Windows Phone 7's best feature.

Running a negative campaign like this can be risky. You see people frustrated
with their phones, you see the Windows Phone 7 logo, and you subconsciously
combine the two.

You see someone throw their phone into a toilet. You see the Windows Phone 7
logo, and combine to two events together.

I don't envy the ad agency that took on this unenviable job. It's a bit like
taking on the ad campaign to promote New Coke._

~~~
pak
They're not frustrated, they're _engrossed_. So engrossed the phone falls into
a toilet and he picks it right back out to keep typing. Did he watch the ad
carefully? If there's an mis-association to be made, it's with addictive phone
usage, not frustration. Not exactly the worst association you could make.

I find the ad dangerous for exactly the opposite reason: it's like MS is
promoting a phone that you _won't_ enjoy using too much, so you want to spend
as little time on it as possible. This aligns fairly well with my experience
with Office and Windows products.

~~~
eogas
> it's like MS is promoting a phone that you won't enjoy using too much, so
> you want to spend as little time on it as possible.

This is exactly what I was thinking. With these commercials, Microsoft isn't
pandering to the "techie" crowd. They're trying to market their product to
normal people. I think the simple fact that it's a cool, modern smartphone
means that, for the tech crowd, it will essentially sell itself. The tech
crowd doesn't need to be marketed to. They'll pick up anything that's new.

They did the same thing when marketing Windows 7 with the whole "my idea"
campaign, and I think it will work with the phone too.

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jsz0
It's a clever commercial. I'm sure they'll get some _"can you hear me now?"_
social echo chamber effect from it. I really hope people outgrow this
compulsive phone fiddling disorder but I doubt WM7 is the solution. People
aren't caught up in the minutia of the OS itself. They're mostly focusing on
SMS & Facebook apps at this point. Maybe games too.

~~~
megablast
Agree, this line struck me as odd from the article "I'm a huge fan of
Microsoft's marketing campaigns for Bing, Internet Explorer 8 and Windows 7."

Really? I enjoyed this ad, very witty, and an idea I hadn't seen before, but
still resonates. But come on, the other stuff was rubbish.

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semanticist
I see most TV ads with the sound off (I mute the TV during ad breaks).

Watching this one with the sound off completely reverses the intended effect.
At least one person I've seen mention it on Twitter wasn't paying attention to
the sound and thought that Windows Phone 7 making you fall down the stairs was
the point of the ad.

Lots of people don't pay that much attention to adverts, and what they'll take
away from this is: people are dicks with Windows Phone 7.

~~~
riffraff
up until the end, I also thought "so good you won't be able to leave it" was
the intended message.

It also recalled an old halo commercial on the lines of "I used to have a
boyfriend, then halo came" (not sure if it only aired in my country or
worldwide).

Frankly while I think the ad is fun, it does not seem to be convincing. But
that's probably not the point, I guess the only goal was to have this become
some sort of viral video. People only need to be exposed, not convinced.

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tptacek
This would be interesting if it meant that Microsoft was positioning Phone -
As - Peripheral against Apple's Phone - As - Platform. But they aren't; look
at their marketing material and they're triangulating and trying to have it
both ways, getting you "in and out" when you want to be "in and out" but being
"immersive" when that's what you want.

Telling: this ad doesn't really show the product.

~~~
hammerdr
Not showing the product is not an unheard of marketing technique. Nike is
famous for this. There are also other examples such as Wonderbra and Kellog's.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/business/media/05adco.html...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/business/media/05adco.html?_r=1)

If I had to guess, the WP7 ads deliberately minimize the product itself. The
subtext here is that WP7 is not a robot that controls your life or a walled
garden from which you cannot escape. Instead, it is a seamless extension of
you.

I like the adverts. We'll have to see whether Microsoft takes the spirit of
their advertising into their software.

~~~
potatolicious
All 3 of the above examples are (for the most part) commodity products being
sold by existing market leaders.

Which is to say, everyone already knows about Nikes, Kellogs, and Wonderbra -
raising the brand awareness to a level that transcends the commodity nature of
the product (not just "a pair of runners") is the task at hand.

It may not be the best marketing position for a product playing catchup, where
public awareness is very poor, and the whole "mobile OS" product is not at all
commoditized at this point (though Android is trying, I suppose).

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matthew-wegner
Compare the message here to this "Disconnect to Connect" ad from Thailand:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17ZrK2NryuQ>

~~~
SriniK
Nice find - thanks. Someone mentioned this kinda stuff being inspired rather
than copied :)

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robchez
I like to mess with my team at work every now and then. I use them as my own
personal market research as they are from a host of different backgrounds
(mech engineers, business administration, accountants, legal).

I showed them the advertisements and they all enjoyed it and thought it was
clever and amusing. The consensus was even though they didn't find out
anything about the phone, they all really want to find out. So for a study
population of n=7, the advertisement 'worked'.

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pkaler
I actually like the first ad. But it's stolen from the "Really" skit from SNL:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntd5wWigzxs>

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bryanwb
These commercials make me not want to use any phone; they don't spur me to buy
a windows phone

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po
Very clever ad, but not for this product. I don't see the cure to distraction
as getting "in and out" quickly. The iPhone gets me in and out again much
quicker than my previous phone which is the whole reason I check it so often.

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jwcacces
Something tells me that the depiction of a windows 7 phone as a phone you
don't use very much is probably accurate.

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shaunfs
Funny ads although I think it's difficult to market Windows Phone 7 as being
easier/faster than others. Visually the iPhone and Android appear more
beautiful and equal if not more obvious to use at first glance, in my opinion.
Instead, this new Windows Phone 7 marketing feels like they are saying "buy
our phones because the other ones are too difficult to pull away from". If
someone wasn't paying much attention to the wording in the ad it may have the
opposite intended message which is "buy our phone and you'll forget about
everything else".

~~~
yread
Perhaps that's what they meant. That the windows phone will show you facebook
messages but because of the minimalistic UI when you're done with that you'll
just put it back in the pocket. As opposed to other phones where you would
just keep staring at beautiful background and lickable icons.

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modeless
Windows Phone 7: it's the phone you won't want to use.

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latch
Doesn't make me want to buy one any more, but I thought it was genuinely
funny. The bar is low, but its certainly the best MS ad we've seen in a very
long time.

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bdclimber14
Microsoft has a habit of being a few years late on any technology. Internet
Explorer 9, and it's HTML 5 and CSS 3 support, should have been released 2
years ago to be competitive. Yet IE9, and I'm sure the Windows 7 Phone will
get massive market share..

~~~
riffraff
Except when they are not (surface, tablets, web integrated in the OS) and
everybody says they are idiots :)

~~~
bdclimber14
Wow I forgot about surface... what ever happened to that?

~~~
riffraff
they are still selling them, not massive success it appears
<http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en/us/default.aspx>

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philwelch
It's interesting to try and position a smartphone towards people who hate
obsessive smartphone users. I don't think that's the best positioning, though.

Microsoft has the power to keep crapware off of Windows phones and the Windows
Phone UI seems better designed than Android, at least aesthetically. They're
also on networks other than AT&T, which is their competitive advantage against
Apple. So at least until a Verizon iPhone comes out Windows can sell WP7 on
those merits. Upon getting that beachhead, they can beat Apple in third-party
apps by not being dicks to their developers.

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sunkencity
So they are going after the middle aged segment. I don't see how this ad would
appeal to kids.

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pornel
I see message of this ad as: "You clearly love to use your phone. We'll change
that".

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recoiledsnake
Interesting "pre-ad". They'll need to show off more of the features before the
phones actually hit the stores.

~~~
Shamiq
It's a pretty sweet phone...

~~~
megablast
What the hell isn't these days. There are so many great phones out there now.

Engadget summed it up will in their coverage, they are nice phones, but
nothing special. Still a bit behind the best from Apple and the Android camp.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
It seems to be a decent version 1.

The question is going to be can they bridge the gaps between WP7 and iOS /
Android faster than iOS / Android can open new gaps.

What I do like about it from a marketing stand point is that the UI isn't a
bunch of icons, they've at least tried to do something different which I think
is to be commended.

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Luyt
I find it rude to give your phone more attention than the person you're with,
in social contexts. [As you might guess, I don't have a iPhone/smartphone/PDA]

