Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

Pink PCs and Baseball Boys: These Microsoft Ads Are Growing on Me (But I Am Still a Mac!)

OK, the Lauren commercial was a little too cute for its own good, and BoomTown has no interest in Giampaulo’s “really big hands.”

But the latest installment of Microsoft’s real-people advertising Internet and television ad campaign, called “Laptop Hunters”–this time a mother and son named Lisa and Jackson looking to score a computer–is pretty funny and sweet.

Deftly lacing in baseball and playing to cute but tired clichés (did you hear–boys don’t like the color pink!), the main theme of heft value over too-thin hipness is really starting to kick in: That a person can get more computer for the money by buying a PC over a Mac.

Again, this segment slyly insults Apple (AAPL) as overpriced and undersized–“It’s a little too small,” says Jackson, while Lisa calls the Macs “pretty.”

The pair finally walk out of the store with a Sony (SNE) Vaio.

While I cannot blame Microsoft (MSFT) for sticking to the Apple-Is-for-Value-Ignorant-Elites meme, I still wish that the messaging would move on from price to more important things such as how the software and hardware perform together.

Cuz, frankly, I like pretty.

Here are Lisa and Jackson, as well the Lauren and Giampaulo, below:

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When AllThingsD began, we told readers we were aiming to present a fusion of new-media timeliness and energy with old-media standards for quality and ethics. And we hope you agree that we’ve done that.

— Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, in their farewell D post