Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

Are Those Anti-Apple Microsoft Ads Actually Working?

microsoft-adThe Web is full of armchair ad critics, particularly when it comes to spots from Apple and Microsoft. And the usual consensus from the chattering classes: Apple ads goooood. Microsoft ads baaaaaad.

But Microsoft’s (MSFT) latest campaign, which features documentary-like tales of  youngish people priced out by Apple (AAPL), may actually be working. At least when it comes to youngish people’s perceptions of the two brands. So says tracking service BrandIndex. More from AdAge:

The perceptions of value the two brands offer has shifted dramatically in the eyes of 18- to 34-years-olds since Microsoft began running its “Laptop Hunters” campaign in late March. Apple’s “value perception” has fallen considerably, while Microsoft’s has risen…

Based on daily interviews of 5,000 people, BrandIndex found the age group gave Apple its highest rating in late winter, when it notched a value score of 70 on a scale of -100 to 100 (a score of zero means that people are giving equal amounts of positive and negative feedback about a brand). But its score began to fall shortly after and, despite brief rallies, hovers around 12.4 today.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has risen from near zero in early February to a value-perception score of 46.2.

The real test, of course will be actual sales data, and we won’t see anything resembling official numbers for this period until several months from now. But for the record, tracking service NPD says that overall PC sales dropped seven percent in the first three months of this year, while Apple’s Mac shipments dropped 1.8 percent.

Here’s the Microsoft ad starring “Lauren,” which kicked off the latest campaign:

And here’s Apple’s sort-of response:

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I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik