In round nine jillion of Microsoft vs. Apple -- a battle for our hearts; a battle for our wallets -- Microsoft is striking back, this time with its "Laptop Hunter" ads and, coming soon, retails stores right next to Apple stores. Suck on that, Steve Jobs' mock turtlenecks!
Yesterday, at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference, COO Kevin Turner told assembled folk that the Windows empire's bargain-themed ads are working. He even said the Apple legal team contacted him to stop running the ads. "We got a call from the Apple legal department saying, hey -- this is a true story -- saying, 'Hey, you need to stop running those ads, we lowered our prices.' They took like $100 off or something. It was the greatest single phone call in the history that I've ever taken in business.... I did cartwheels down the hallway. At first I said, 'Is this a joke? Who are you?' Not understanding what an opportunity. And so we're just going to keep running them and running them and running them." (Full text of Turner's remarks aqui.)
I'm kind of surprised it's taken Microsoft this long to hit Apple on the price wars stuff. Leaving aside preference or style or whatever, there's no way around the fact that Macs are more expensive than PCs. It seems like a no-brainer in these cost-conscious times to be hammering that point home, especially because pricing has never been part of Apple's campaigns.
I find the "Laptop Hunter" ads extraordinarily irritating, so I don't particularly relish the fact they're not going anywhere. But I also find buying things to be quite fun, particularly if I can afford them, so if this nudges prices down across the computing board, well, count me in. What about you, PopWatchers? Is it all about the Benjamins when you're buying a computer, or is it also about the Steves Jobs and Ballmer?
It's not quite the Sticky Note Experiment, but this student-made ad for HP is mesmerizing:
Beyond the coolness factor, I totally agree with Gizmodo: The truly amazing thing here is that Matt and Tom got that many printers to work for that long. What?! There's nary a PC load letter in sight? Well done, sirs!
The whole CGI-enabled "babies talking and/or acting like adults" thing kinda creeps me out, and this ad for Evian, in which babies are doing rollerskate stunts and breakdancing to "Rapper's Delight," is no exception. That said, it's pretty seamless, definitely hilarious (love the cocky "What?" stance at 0:43), and a marked improvement on the ho-hum synchronized swimming Evian ad from a couple months ago. Plus, they toss in a few giggles, coos, and toddles to help cute it up a bit. Definitely a clever way to hammer home Evian's "Live Young" slogan and help bring a hip-hop coolness to a brand that could still benefit from anything that helps shed its lingering Yuppie-Water stigma. What think ye?
Jay Leno's getting a bigger-than-normal soundstage for his new prime-time talk show on NBC this fall, just so he can drive onto the set in some of his famous vintage cars. Seems a little tone-deaf, given that people are selling their Chevys just to feed their families and dealerships are going under in record numbers. But it could, in fact, be Leno's own way of surviving the recession: The gambit is a clever way to sneak product placement into the show during a time when car manufacturers are offering to pay your bills just to get you to buy from them. Essentially, it could seamlessly give automakers some extra bang for their advertising buck while helping make cars seem a little bit cool again. (Between gas prices, impending environmental devastation, and government bailouts, U.S. autos are soooo far from their '57 Chevy days.)
What do you think, PopWatchers? Are you turned off by the prospect of Jay arriving in motorized style? Or impressed with the ingenuity of such product placement?
At the risk of sounding completely insane today instead of my typical "partially," I'm convinced that the kid in the backseat of AT&T's new Family Plan commercial was cast solely because his voice sounds exactly like Michael Cera's. Listen and learn.
Well, "learn" was the wrong word. But it's worth asking: Has Michael Cera -- or Michael Cera's high-pitched, uneasy voice -- become his/its own genre at this point? I'm noticing more and more that certain products incorporate a certain offbeat "type" to sell things. In the latest Verizon/LG commercial, I get a distinctive Clark Duke or possibly Jonah Hill vibe from the sloppy-looking, sarcastic guy who claims "I would never use that stuff!" but is secretly jonesing for a new enV cell phone so he can start using all the cool apps ASAP and become a Twitter tool like his two gushing friends. I suppose if you can't have a T Mobile-shilling Catherine Zeta-Jones show up at the potential customer's doorstep, a surrogate voice-alike or act-alike is the next best thing. It's refreshing, actually, to see more relatable people on-screen than the perfect, plasticine 'bots we're used to.
Maybe I just watched too much* Arrested Development on DVD this weekend and am all George Michael'ed out.
As a few PopWatch commenters have pointed out, boisterous infomercial overlord Billy Mays, who died in his sleep Saturday night, guested on The Tonight Show just last week with his Pitchmen co-host Andrew Sullivan. I love how Conan, the audience, and even Mays and Sullivan themselves can't stifle the occasional giggle at how utterly useless some of the pair's hawked products have been. (Not that I would mind owning a Zorbeez, if only so that I could occasionally wring out Snapple over Michael Ausiello's keyboard and then fling it over to him so he could perform minimal cleanup.) Press play below.
According to Discovery Channel's website, all nine episodes of Pitchmen's first season will air back-to-back beginning at 11 a.m. this Wednesday, July 1. So be honest, PopWatchers: Ever spring for a Billy Mays-peddled product?
Just when I thought we had reached our capacity for celebrity death this week (Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon), I was saddened to learn about the passing of another pop culture fixture: Billy Mays, TV pitchman extraordinaire. The man jumped off the screen and right onto my living room couch for several reasons: He had his volume knob cranked up; he wore a blue button-down shirt, emblazoned with the logo of the product he was selling; he boasted an industrial-strength beard; and he introduced his lively game with a simple 'Hi, Billy Mays here for [insert product]...." The list of amusingly titled products that he peddled was long—OxiClean, Orange Glo, Kaboom, Zorbeez, to name a few—and he did his job well enough to earn a starring role in the Discovery Channel reality series Pitchmen. Not afraid to sell himself silly on occasion (see the tongue-in-cheek ESPN360 spot below), he earned a cult following, as evidenced by sites like this.
So, PopWatchers, have you ever purchased a product pitched by Billy? And which one of his commercials/informercials was your favorite?
If it hasn't already happened, today can go down in the record books as the day subtlety died. Burger King's latest advertisement -- for its, ahem, BK Super Seven Incher -- leaves little to imagination or interpretation. As you can see here, the woman in said advertisement is about to go down on said Super Seven Incher with a suggestive tagline that uses the word "blow." Mmhmm, I think it's safe to assume that such humor will only be going over the heads of those younger than, oh, about 13 years old. (Sorry, parents!)
The "copy" at the bottom of the ad -- not sure that you can even see it here -- takes the whole thing even further: "Fill your desire for something long, juicy and flame-grilled with the NEW BK SUPER SEVEN INCHER," it says. "Yearn for more after you taste the mind-blowing burger that comes with a single beef patty, topped with American cheese, crispy onions and the A1 Thick and Hearty Steak Sauce."
"Something long, juicy"? "Yearn for more"? "Mind-blowing"? I think it's all rather glorious, in an I-love-trash kind of way. Who ever cared about cunning, cleverness, and nuance anyway? Blow your mind (and this Super Seven Incher) instead!
What do you think, PopWatchers? Are you even batting an eye at BK's latest, sexually charged ad campaign?
I've got no problem with Tim McGraw, nor his desire to extend his brand through fragrance -- if Paris Hilton and Gene Simmons can do it, why can't he? My problem is with this commercial:
The message I get from that spot is: "If you wanna smell like a roadhouse juke joint filled with sweaty musicians...McGraw." Is this really the best the advertising whiz kids could come up with?
Wanted: Your questions for Bear Grylls. Why: We're sitting down with the Man vs. Wild host tomorrow when he's in town to promote his role as a Distinguished Instructor at Dos Equis' Most Interesting Academy, "the world's premier institution for the education and
dissemination on the study of being interesting" or, as I like to call it, "one hell of a marketing campaign." Grylls' online course, "Survival in the Modern Era", went live today. The five-part tongue-in-cheek web series teaches urbanites valuable skills in commuting, ensuring personal safety, eating (rat? with mint apparently), overcoming obstacles, and making an entrance. It features a theme song that is half Mission: Impossible and half Priceline (Ne-go-ti-a-tor!), and is guaranteed to delight fans of hearing the word "heli." I think my favorite is "Making an Entrance": We get a butt shot, some of the best impromptu high bar work since Kurt Thomas in Gymkata, and Bear donning the tux that, in my dreams, he's wearing for our 9:30 a.m. chat.
Submit your questions, and I'll make sure Bear hears the best of the best. They don't have to be Most Interesting, just interesting. I, for example, am dying to know what the plan was to get Will Ferrell down that 100-ft. drop if Ferrell had succeeded in lowering Grylls first during their special Men vs. Wild episode. Also, why did he bring a heat-absorbing black T-shirt into the Sahara that time? Because he knew he'd end up peeing on it and wearing it around his head to stay cool, and that survival technique wouldn't have looked pretty on a lighter hue? If you need more inspiration than that, catch Grylls on Letterman tonight or read his highly informative 2008 Q&A with EW's Dan Snierson. An excerpt:
Would you rather cross a slow-moving river that contains piranhas
and candiru [the tiny, parasitic fish that supposedly swim up your
urethra while you're peeing in the water] or violent rapids that
contained no scary fish? The fast one is probably more
dangerous. Only certain piranhas will attack humans, and only when
there's real limited food source. As for those candiru, I'd go through
the river and not pee while I'm crossing it. And keep my pants on.
