Are Apple ads hurting Microsoft's brand?

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neowin

wrote:

A new ranking of global brands shows Microsoft's reputation sinking in recent years. Among the possible factors: Apple's "I'm a Mac" ads.

Microsoft lands at No. 59 in the rankings for 2007, down from No. 11 in 2004, according to the survey from CoreBrand released Wednesday. "The effect of Apple's 'Hi, I'm a Mac' advertising campaign may have taken its toll on Microsoft," CoreBrand CEO James Gregory said in a statement.

 

In fairness to the folks in Redmond, they have fared far better in other recent brand studies. They were No. 1 on a list of Britain's top "superbrands" last year, and No.2 in an August BusinessWeek ranking of top global brands (trailing only Coca-Cola).

 

In my eyes this is an interesting post.

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Microsoft does a lot for the developers, like creating Channel 9 and doing all these interviews is wonderful. Microsoft does also a lot for IT pros, like the TechNet Edge effort etc. Microsoft does a lot for students (but could be more) like Channel 8, Imagine Cup etc.

 

But Microsoft somehow misses the customer that is not one of these before. If I go to the local computer store, Apple is having their own space there where they put their computers and have running their ads (also the "I'm a Mac" one).*The space is like a small Apple store inside the*computer store.*Microsoft isn't having anything like this. Vista is found somewhere between the other software and the same is with the Xbox games etc. It's somewhere in between.

 

I have seen this trend already years ago - and also posted about them here on Channel 9. Apple, then, did already events at the local malls and they did also stuff at university where you saw that they spend money on this (you saw that the company wanted to do this): they hired a pro singer that stood at our university for 2 days and played with Garageband. Also a few representatives from Apple were there and showed the software and hardware to the students. The same happened also in the malls.

 

Also, Apple knows how to focus on new features. Each new version of OSX has some key features and these are told to the customer over and over and over and over and over. Until they think it is the greatest thing on world. Also they say: we have like 104 new features in OSX. Vista has also tons of new features and nobody knows, because nobody ever tells the average customer...

 

I'm wondering when Microsoft is going to do similar things. It's a little bit like the marketing department is sleeping...

 

 

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