The Wall St. Journal reported today that, “For months, Microsoft has jabbed at Apple with an, at times, baffling advertising campaign for Windows PCs. Now Microsoft may finally land a solid blow against its rival [with its new campaign].”
According to the article:
“For the commercials, Microsoft’s advertising agency, Crispin Porter + Boguksy, recruited prospective computer shoppers in the Los Angeles area through Craigslist and other sites, with a tantalizing offer to give them between $700 and $2,000 to purchase a new PC. According to Brad Brooks, corporate vice president for Windows consumer product marketing at Microsoft, the agency told recruits it was a market research firm and didn’t mention it was working with Microsoft. The recruits were told they could keep whatever money they didn’t spend on a PC so they had incentives to look for good values.”
The ad goes on to feature Lauren “at a Best Buy, ogling a bounty of Windows PCs, where she’s able to purchase a H-P Pavilion notebook with a 17-inch screen for $699.99, before sales tax. Brooks says that, off camera, Lauren spent about $900 total after also buying a printer. “I’m a PC, and I got just what I wanted,” Lauren says at the end of the ad.”
If Lauren had been really smart she would have taken the money, purchased a Dell Mini 9 [1] running Ubuntu for $249.00 ($8.00 shipping to California and no taxes) and then went over to Bestbuy for a 42″ flat screen TV [2]to give her that “big screen” she wanted.
Too bad when Lauren gets home she will discover she has to trudge back to Bestbuy to pick up a copy of Microsoft Office [3] for at least $149.00 if she wants to create documents on that PC which would have broken her $1000 budget. But we already knew that the first cigarette is always free when it comes to Windows.
The Linux Foundation will be showing our Linux commercials [4] at our Collaboration Summit [5] in less than two weeks. Maybe we should come up with a last minute entry featuring some happy Linux shoppers keeping almost all their cash.