Apple’s Macintosh computers may be cool, but Windows PCs are easier on the wallet.
That’s the recession-sensitive message Microsoft Corp. is pushing in a new series of commercials that debuted Thursday. The ads also continue Microsoft’s work to reclaim the “I’m a PC” catchphrase from Apple Inc. and undo the stodgy image its competitor has bestowed on the Windows operating system.
To shoot the ads, Microsoft’s agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, recruited unwitting subjects by posing as a market research firm studying laptop purchasing decisions.
It picked 10 people who answered a call for volunteers on Craigslist and other Web sites and sent them out with a camera crew and budgets ranging from $700 to $2,000. If they found a computer that fit their criteria, they could keep it.
In the first 60-second spot, a red-haired recent college grad named Lauren is on the hunt for a speedy laptop with a 17-inch screen and a “comfortable” keyboard, all for less than $1,000. She strides into an Apple store; then, the scene jumps to her walking out empty-handed, telling the camera that the only laptop in her price range has a 13-inch screen.
Back in the car, she sighs and says, “I’m just not cool enough to be a Mac person.”
Lauren, an office manager and member of the Screen Actors Guild, heads to Best Buy next, where she ends up buying a Windows notebook made by Hewlett-Packard Co. for $699. And she wasn’t alone. While some might have been able to find an Apple computer that fit the budget, Microsoft said none of the people they filmed picked a Mac.
Brad Brooks, a Windows marketing executive, said the soon-to-be-stars weren’t told they might appear in a Microsoft ad until after the shopping excursions, which all took place in Southern California. When Lauren found out, he said there was “screaming, yelling, jumping up and down, high fives, thumbs up.”
Apple has been churning out ads that portray Macs as cool and creative, while pigeonholing PCs as nerdy copycats that never quite succeed.
Last fall, Microsoft kicked off a $300 million campaign to rehabilitate the Windows brand, which had suffered further after Vista’s troubled launch.
The first installments, starring Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and comedian Jerry Seinfeld, were criticized as odd non-sequiturs. But since then, the software maker has pumped out endearingly earnest and upbeat commercials showing all sorts of people — from self-help guru Deepak Chopra to a 4-year-old cutie named Kylie — proudly proclaiming, “I’m a PC.”
Microsoft hasn’t emphasized the Vista brand in its ads, but most PCs on the market today run Vista. Meanwhile, the next version, Windows 7, is officially due out in less than a year. Brooks said the Redmond, Wash., software maker hasn’t decided whether it will offer free or discounted upgrades for people who go ahead and buy a Vista computer now.
“I want to make sure in this environment that we’re thinking about ways of making that upgrade experience true to principles around affordable and accessible.,” he said. “We’re thinking about that in the background.”
Review: Director Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17” Starring Robert Pattinson
So you think YOUR job is bad?
Sorry if we seem to be lacking empathy here. But however crummy you think your 9-5 routine is, it'll never be as bad as Robert Pattinson's in Bong Joon Ho's "Mickey 17" — nor will any job, on Earth or any planet, approach this level of misery.
Mickey, you see, is an "Expendable," and by this we don't mean he's a cast member in yet another sequel to Sylvester Stallone's tired band of mercenaries ("Expend17ables"?). No, even worse! He's literally expendable, in that his job description requires that he die, over and over, in the worst possible ways, only to be "reprinted" once again as the next Mickey.
And from here stems the good news, besides the excellent Pattinson, whom we hope got hazard pay, about Bong's hotly anticipated follow-up to "Parasite." There's creativity to spare, and much of it surrounds the ways he finds for his lead character to expire — again and again.
The bad news, besides, well, all the death, is that much of this film devolves into narrative chaos, bloat and excess. In so many ways, the always inventive Bong just doesn't know where to stop. It hardly seems a surprise that the sci-fi novel, by Edward Ashton, he's adapting here is called "Mickey7" — Bong decided to add 10 more Mickeys.
The first act, though, is crackling. We begin with Mickey lying alone at the bottom of a crevasse, having barely survived a fall. It is the year 2058, and he's part of a colonizing expedition from Earth to a far-off planet. He's surely about to die. In fact, the outcome is so expected that his friend Timo (Steven Yeun), staring down the crevasse, asks casually: "Haven't you died yet?"
How did Mickey get here? We flash back to Earth, where Mickey and Timo ran afoul of a villainous loan... Read More