September 01, 2002
The legend about Sir Isaac Newton has it that, as he was sitting under an apple tree, one of the fruits succumbed to gravity, hit him in the head and dislodged several theories about physics, the universe and fig-filled cookies. The impact of Newton’s simple but inescapable conclusions spans the ages, and although I wouldn’t put it in the same category, this latest campaign from Apple does share a certain bonk-you-on-the-head kind of awakening that announces the abrupt arrival of all great ideas.
Besides, who else in this business has the stones to go after the monopolists in Redmond the way Apple does? While all the other companies who have been hurt by MicrosoftﾗSun, Netscape, AOL, to name just the most prominentﾗhave done little more than wring their hands ineffectually in an embarrassing effort to solicit the aid of impotent government regulators, Apple puts its money and its brand muscle to the wheel with a better product and a campaign that takes the penultimate competitive position: Switch.
Although this campaign comes out of the larger, merged TBWA/Chiat/Day, it is vintage Chiat/Day, with all the in-your-faceness of “1984” minus the grandiose political sensibilities. But I’m told the idea for the campaign came from Jobs himself. Or rather from the thousands of emails Jobs received from users who’d already made the switch unprompted. The commercials cast ordinary users who tell their stories about how painful the Windows operating system is, how easy it was to switch and how happy they are that they did.
All the adsﾗTV, print, outdoorﾗdirect viewers to a section of Apple’s web site that reinforces the advertising with embellishments, such as “10 Reasons to Switch,” and a step-by-step guide to doing so. The campaign is carried through to point of sale in Apple stores, collateral and every other thing the company does. It’s a serious effort, and everything is executed with Apple’s typical brand gestalt. Is Apple the only company in Silicon Valley that understands branding?
On the face of it, this campaign makes a very simple proposition, one that resonates with most computing consumers because they have to deal with it every day. It takes the thorny problem of operating systems by the smooth handle and reduces it to its most common denominator: Ease of Use. But the larger and more important issue raised by the campaign isn’t simple at all, and it’s the one Apple and Chiat/Day have cleverly laid between their well-written lines: the Windows operating system is Irrelevant.
Consider this issue for a moment. If your Office files run, can be stored and retrieved easily, and are compatible with all your colleagues’ files, why do you care which operating system they run on? If you can move those files to another, more reliable, more secure OS, doesn’t it make good sense to do so? And if in fact that’s the case, what is the charm of using Windows?
One of my more cynical friends maintains that MIS departments all over the world adopted Microsoft operating systems in an effort to provide themselves with job security. Indeed, maintaining something that needs so much maintenance and that is difficult at best for an ordinary human being to understand, is a good way to keep your job. But it’s a lousy way for the rest of us to do ours.
Still, I wonder if this campaign will be enough to get people to switch. There are few barriers anymore. Apple hardware is sexy, smart and just about the same price (barring all but the cheapest offerings from Dell and the Taiwanese clone makers). Yes, the x86 world still has a lot more apps, but how many do you really use? And now that OS X is here and runs all your files, what’s holding you back? My random sample of two stores in the Bay Area turned up mixed results. In a non-Apple branded computer store, the campaign hadn’t generated much activity. But in the Apple store, about half of the people who were buying hardware were former PC users. I’ll be curious to see Apple’s figures on this as time goes by. I, for one, am rooting for them, and I suspect a lot of others are, too.
I think we can safely assume that the appearance of this campaign marks the end of Microsoft’s five-year, $100 million dollar investment in Apple. And while this campaign clearly draws the battle lines on the OS front going forward, other overtures between the two companies do not. Apple’s recent release of the iPod for Windows, for instance, points out an uneasy alliance if ever there was one, with the two companies slapping each other with one hand and slapping each other on the back with the other.
Clearly the two companies must continue to cooperate. Apple needs Microsoft’s support on Office applications and others, and Microsoft cannot afford to be perceived as being any more anti-competitive than they already are by crushing the life out of Apple. In fact, Microsoft could go so far as to make the specious argument that the appearance of this campaign means they’re not an illegal monopoly at all but rather just an honest bunch of folks out to make a few hundred billion dollars controlling an entire industry. And the Justice Department would be dumb enough to believe them.
What about you? Whom do you believe? And do you believe enough to switch? TM
Frank Priscaro is the former director of brand development at Transmeta. Reach him via email at priscaro@aol.com
