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Apple on ads vs. customer experience
Got a customer experience problem? Choose where to invest: fixing the user experience, or advertising to bring more people into the problematic experience.
No joke, some companies still don't know the right answer. As I wrote in Budgeting for Advertising and the Customer Experience, some CEOs still would rather throw tens of millions of bucks at the problem with ads.
So I really enjoyed Apple's take:
Yes, I know it's ironic that we're watching this message in the form of an ad. Still.
(Thanks to Scott for the pointer!)
What is so totally funny about the Apple ads is how they use advertising dollars to create a message, but the message is all about PCs, which diverts attention from the fact that Apple is spending so much money on advertising, and all the while the subliminal message of the ad itself is that "Apple doesn't advertise, we spend our money on creating a great experience." The whole thing is so circular and hilarious, I actually rewind my TiVo to watch the ads. (Something we always said when I was at TiVo that people would do for the relevant ads, but we didn't always really believe it ourselves, but in this case it's actually true.)
BTW, I actually think MSFTs latest ads about "I am not a tweed jacket stereotype" are also brilliant. I don't take sides in the ads wars, I love them both equally. Which is not true for the actual product -- pry my Mac out of my dead hands, as they say.
This would be a whole lot more convincing if I weren't living through the whole iphone experience these days. It sure is pretty but it's missing basic functionality that my $20 pay-as-you-go phone supported and has embarrassing bugs that a few hours of beta testing should have turned up and been obvious show-stoppers.
I'd really like to meet the team at Apple that covers up their own problems in OS X, cuz lord knows they definitely exist!
Also, didn't Apple start those Mac vs. PC ads years ago, and then just now Microsoft starts advertising? Seems almost hypocritical...
The irony of that video and all this talk about Microsoft advertising is I keep thinking back to the recent debacle commercial of Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld in a shoe store - which is the only image I see now when someone mentions Microsoft.
The part that is interesting to me is how we believe the Apple ads. They make the Apple so much easier to use in the mind of the customer. The truth is it takes weeks and even months to master the Mac when your current education is PC based. But you don't think about that. You just want to be cool like the Apple guy and not a geek like the PC guy