| Monday, June 10, 2002 |
11:35 - Apple Goes On the Offensive
http://www.apple.com/switch/
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You know how in war movies with Mel Gibson in them, there's always this point towards the end where the music rises in hopeful and grand chord progressions as the small, outnumbered good-guy force of underdogs realizes that their hordes of opponents are confused, demoralized, and surprised by their ferocity-- and starts waving their weapons in the air, shrieking battle-cries, and charges to the slaughter?
Looks like today's the day. Apple has gone on the offensive.
It's been rumored for years that the big thing holding back Apple in the marketplace is simply that their advertising sucks. Yes, the ad spots are always very cute and very clever and always win Clios. But they don't sell Macs; they just make people smirk. What we really need, all the rumormongers have said, is to see some "real-world" stories of people who use Macs and why they prefer them over Windows machines. Something to bring the awareness into the mainstream. Something to play on the public's frustration with Windows PCs. Something to look the customer in the eye and tell him that Macs are not only not a forgotten and dusty computing aberration from the 80s, but they're a vibrant and sexy platform that everyday people can join.
It's sort of like the "Dell Dude" ads, though nowhere near as smarmy. It's still targeting artists and professionals rather than baggy-pants-wearing teenagers and g4m3erZ. This is "Dell Dude" for adults.
What is it? It's the result of that effort Apple made several months ago to get people to e-mail in their stories of switching to Macs. Apple has taken those letters, sifted through them for the ones that were the most original and marketable, then contacted the people who wrote them and sifted through those for the ones that are the most presentable on camera. (I'm just guessing here, but it seems to be the sensible thing to do.) Then they posted the e-mails on the website and filmed TV spots for eight of the most photogenic people with the most appealing insights. They seem to have turned up a lot of IT professionals (who talk about how they work on Windows because they're paid to, but use Macs at home because they want to) and artists and writers who aren't big computer people, but love how the Mac lets them do things they never thought they could do without reading lots of "For Dummies" books.
Chris, playing Devil's Advocate as always, wondered whether this was "astroturf"-- isn't that a great term?-- in other words, a "faked grassroots" campaign which is really just copy written by Apple and read on camera by actors. That's a Microsoftian tactic (remember their "Freedom to Innovate" campaign?). But I don't think that's what it is, and not just because he put me in the position of defending these spots. I myself would agree that if this is astroturf, it's an unforgivable and crappy thing to do, and would entail a major loss of faith in Apple on my part.
But it looks real to me. And to Chris too, after we watched the spots. These people don't look like actors, and the letters are all different styles. (My favorite goes like this:
I bought the iMac for the following reasons:
1) Mac OS X
2) Mac OS X
3) Mac OS X
4) Very nice hardware
5) Easy to setup hardware
6) Did I mention OS X???
7) Me to play with OS X Development Tools
This isn't marketing-ese, I don't think.)
And the "Real People" stories are only part of this new site, which merits a whole tab at the top of the apple.com website, "Switch". It has top-ten lists of reasons to buy a Mac, questions people have about switching (along with detailed answers about issues switchers might face in transferring e-mail address books, web favorites, photo collections, applications, and so on), press quotes, and-- boy, this is brash-- a How-to-Switch Guide which walks you through the step-by-step process of getting your important files off your old beige box and onto your new Mac.
What this takes is a whole lot of confidence. Apple just hasn't had that before. Morale in the marketing department probably just wouldn't have supported it before OS X became stable, and certainly not before OS X was released at all. Only now do they have the courage of conviction to help them push both the OS and the hardware; they know that critical mass is hitting right about now, and it's the perfect time to start the big push into the mainstream consciousness. OS X will live up to the hype, now. (One of the letters talks about how the Mac works as advertised-- which to a jaded consumer of computer stuff is about equivalent to saying that it cures cancer and feeds starving countries and gives the world reason to join hands and sing.) So will the iApps, and so will the hardware. Now's the time to present the Mac as an obviously better solution, and chances are that the public will take it seriously.
That takes balls. But what takes even more numerous balls is what this campaign is implicitly doing to the Wintel world: it's a full frontal assault, for the first time in... well, since the 80s. Apple has studiously avoided directly antagonizing Microsoft for many years now, because they know what happens to companies that get on Microsoft's bad side. (Remember what happened when the newly-returned Steve decided to make Netscape the default browser on the then-new OS 8? Bill Gates called him up and asked, "So, how should we go about making the announcement of the cancellation of Microsoft Office for the Mac?")
So now Apple is shaking their AK-47s and screaming down out of the hills onto the opposing forces which no doubt do have the power to crush them without much effort if they decide to do it. What does this mean for Apple's relationship with Microsoft? It's a crucial one, if only for Office and IE. And Office represents one of the biggest bullet points in these "why switching won't turn you into a troglodytic tech orphan" pages. The Mac can't make a case for itself in business without Office. AppleWorks just doesn't cut it. What happens if Bill decides to lash back at Apple for this little incursion into his territory?
But that's just it: I don't think they can. Even though these antitrust trials seem to be succeeding only in handing Microsoft great victories both in terms of money and legal precedent for future monopolistic practices, I think attacking Apple right now is something they can't afford to do. It just wouldn't make good PR. How would they do it? There are plenty of cheap shots they could take-- they could paint the Mac as a "toy", they could make fun of its "obsolete" UNIX core, they could fling imagery of swirling Windows software proliferation at the screen like an AOL ad. ("Your Bonzi Buddy can't follow you onto the Mac! Please don't leave me behind!") But if Apple has calculated this correctly, the public is catching on to the grass-roots whispers that the Mac is a hot place to be-- critical mass would give the public the ability to see the Microsoft attack for what it would be, which is bitter and petty FUD.
There hasn't been an ad campaign like this since the early 90s, when a kid wanted to play with a dinosaur CD-ROM that his father just couldn't get working on their PC. Finally, the kid gave up and left. "I'm going over to Billy's house," he said. "They have a Mac."
That was the last we saw of Apple before they turned sycophantic and abstract in their advertising, and lost the ear of the market and slipped into obscurity. Time was that the guy in the record store could get a cruel laugh from the audience by replying to Homer Simpson's mention of "Apple Computer" with "What Computer?" But now, it seems, their testicles have grown back, and they're loaded for bear.
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