

Ask HN: What do Microsoft employees think about the new Scroogled campaign? - riyadparvez

See http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scroogled.com&#x2F;
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CurtHagenlocher
I, for one, generally like to pretend that none of Microsoft's ad campaigns
actually exists.

My suspicion is that Microsoft's current spate of negative advertising can be
traced directly back to the Mac vs PC ads of a few years ago. These happened
to coincide with a remarkable rampup in the popularity of Apple's PCs, and
that cannot have gone unnoticed at the C-levels. Whether or not the ads were
actually a driving factor in the change is, of course, hard to say -- but they
certainly didn't seem to discourage anyone from buying Apple.

What the decision-makers seem to have missed, though, was that 1) the ads
themselves were gentle and somewhat charming (or at least John Hodgman helped
make them that way) and 2) although these things were largely exaggerated for
comic effect, they often targeted real pain points that consumers actually had
with Windows.

Of course, in implicitly painting Microsoft as buffoonish and perhaps even
incompetent, I think these ads generated more rage in the boardroom than they
would have if they'd been merely full-on attack ads in the style of
"Scroogled".

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jamesjguthrie
Seems like they're spending a lot of money on the campaign. We're getting
local radio station adverts here in Glasgow, Scotland. Are they placing them
on radio stations everywhere?

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l0stb0y
Personally, I'm not a fan of the Chromebooks BUT that tacky-ass website makes
me want to love them. Did a billion-dollar company really make that crap?

