The blog-o-sphere has been buzzing about Microsoft's new Windows Vista ad campaign that debuted last Thursday. I'm not going to add another blog post analyzing whether the first ad is good or bad or whether Windows Vista has any chance of shaking off over a year's worth of awful press and reviews. I'll leave that to the advertising and tech blogs to fight it out.
One thing is for sure though, people are talking about this ad. On and offline. I was at dinner last night at my hotel and I overheard a group of regular folks laughing their heads off, "And Jerry and Bill come out of the mall eating churros. Ha ha ha! It was hilarious."
Relevance to credit unions? I know you don't have $300 million to spend on your next campaign, but this example begs these questions. Are your credit union's marketing efforts:
- Memorable?
- Different?
- Remarkable?
And by remarkable, I mean worthy of comment and discussion—good or bad. Now in the case of Microsoft's latest effort, most of the commentary seems to be negative.
Most credit unions play the middle ground of features and benefits advertising producing results that are not remarkable. No one is interesting in duking it out over a bullet-point list of benefits!
Tim
P.S. OK, I will give you my opinion. I'm going to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt. I like the first Vista spot. It has layed the ground work for an interesting story to be told. Going head to head with the stellar Apple Mac vs. PC ads is a near impossible challenge. Vista has been publicly lambasted for more than a year. Microsoft and its agency have chosen to take a very different approach. And for that, I applaud them.
I can't wait to see the rest of the campaign play out. Bill Gates makes a great straight man, but the bigger issue for Microsoft is the negative public perception about Windows Vista. I think Vista sucks and I haven't even used it before! No 90-second spot is going to fix that.