Computer platform wars in advertising.

The battle between Microsoft and Apple rages on. These past few weeks more than one eyebrow was raised when Microsoft published a rather strange ad pointing out that people were entering peoples houses through teeny tiny wires. Apple has to spoof that one.

The Microsoft ad has a headline next to the Internet cable that reads: "This is where 47 people entered your house while you were sleeping."

Oooh, creepy. The ad was mercilessly mocked on blogs and forums all over Sweden as the line is clunky; "do they really mean that 47 full sized burglars crawled through that tiny wire?" one poster asked. No of course not, they meant that "burglars" entered your computer through that wire. Others pointed out the weirdness of Microsoft, with their bad rep for terrible security, was apparently advertising for security with this ad. Or were they?

Of course Apple should respond, with this:

The line reads: "Nobody has ever managed to break in here, ever." - and simply signed by Apple. Ouch. This ad is created by a happy adman/media person who was getting a little sick of the Microsoft ad.

For those who do read Swedish, there's some related posts here, Bold forum discussion about the oddness of the Microsoft ad and Maximac's post suggesting Apple reply to it it.

Adland® is supported by your donations alone. You can help us out by buying us a Ko-Fi coffee.
Anonymous Adgrunt's picture
comment_node_story
Files must be less than 1 MB.
Allowed file types: jpg jpeg gif png wav avi mpeg mpg mov rm flv wmv 3gp mp4 m4v.
AnonymousCoward's picture

That looks more like a Photoshop than an official Apple ad.

Dabitch's picture

It is! :)

AnonymousCoward's picture

I suck. :(

AnonymousCoward's picture

I think Microsoft with this series of ads more or less have opened themseves up for a fight as their security is anything but the best, even though they are working hard on securing it.
With ads which sole purpose is to scare their customers to take operating system security more serious or at least give a thought about it - they drop their resposibility onto the customers.
They admit their software is failing to the level where whomever wants to can intrude the system and their home and the only one that can stop it are the customers themseves.
Imho they do many bad things here:
They are scaring their customers.
They are not informing them, nor helping them.
They do not show any humility when admitting weaknesses in their products.
And they do create a lot of FUD.

I still cant understand why the agency choose this way of getting the customers to secure their systems.

Dabitch's picture

No you don't! I was being really vague on purpose. :) Ik heb de tekst nu verduidelijkt. U 'zuigt' niet. :P

AnonymousCoward's picture

Everything Microsoft touches turns into a security fiasco.

OS, Web browser, etc.

Amazing they would be the one calling this out.

Nobody should do Windows, its like leaving everything open...

anothercopywriter's picture

Yes. And "To Keep Burglars Out, Close Your Windows" might be a good response along those lines.

Dabitch's picture

see, that's why you be the copywriter. ;)

Dabitch's picture

*Moahhaha* I gotta share this guys. :)

Over here at MaxiMac it's creator asked for the images above - and has made a nice before-and-after gif animaton of the twins. The really funny bit is his description of the Microsoft campaign though, he writes:
"It was fascinating to me, as if I was watching someone lock, load and them aim carefully, only to shoot themselves in their foot with absolute certainty."