[via Electric Pig]

Brand Keys, a market research company, did a direct comparison of Microsoft and Apple ads over the last two months. Aside from the obvious conclusions, Amy Shea, executive VP of Brand Keys, had this to say in reference to the fabled WTF-worthy Gates/Seinfeld clip:

On the other hand, Microsoft’s “Shoe Circus,” in which Mr. Seinfeld helped Mr. Gates buy shoes, failed miserably with consumers. After seeing the ad, both Apple and Microsoft users had a more negative perception of Microsoft in the areas of innovation, technology, trouble-free design, and warranty and pricing. “When you see an ad perform this poorly,” said Amy Shea, the executive vice president at Brand Keys who conducted the research, “you’ve got a real problem.”

Also of note is that Apple's ad budget continues to be huge, even in an economic climate where advertising is receiving a disparate proportion of budget cuts.

Why not give the ad another play there; depending on your proclivities, it will either be a fun morning laugh or that masochism-lite sensation of poking a mouth sore relentlessly. [NYTimes]

[BLam - I like the ads! Where's the third?!]

For the next 44 hours, those at 1600 houses (White or otherwise) can get said free Peek, and everyone can get the email-only handheld for $44.44. Are they doing this to rub Barack's nose in his loss of the superior email device? The cleverness is just too much.

Anyhoo, if their lifetime service deal didn't get you, maybe this will. [Peek]

I don't think the OLPC folks are advocating doing the ol' switcheroo—XO for AK-47—to eradicate such horrors as the ones depicted on the spot. No, I think the ad does a great job in reminding us that, hey, this project was started for a serious reason. It's not OLPC's fault that they spawned an entirely new laptop category with plenty of consumer frenzy and ridiculousness behind it in the process.

The ad is, apparently, only intended only for the internet. Although I kind of wish they'd run this next to the iPod Touch and BlackBerry Storm ads in the coveted Office/30 Rock hour for tech advertisers. [OLPC Ad on Daily Motion via Laptop, Gadget Lab]

Lee Iacocca - Chrysler - 1984

Any ad that has the company's CEO starting things off saying, "Well, when you've been kicked in the head like we have..." is going to get attention. After taking a $1.5 billion bailout from the government, Chrysler brought in Lee Iacocca from Ford to right the ship. There are more homespun self-deprecating zingers than you can keep up with. Other spots even featured Iacocca's famous "If you find a better car, buy it" tagline—basically hard-ass sarcasm aimed at potential customers. Hyping new and future cars as being "not bad for a company that had one foot in the grave" is honest to the point of self-destruction, but it's promising improvements.

"They tried to show this charismatic leadership that was going to fix it all, and Iococca himself got out there and he was really, really good at it. People actually were proposing he run for president after these," says Bob Thompson, a professor of media studies at Syracuse. Apparently it's too bad for Microsoft that the Mojave spots don't feature a screaming Ballmer.

GTE Telephone, Los Angeles, 1970
GTE telephone service in Los Angeles in the 1970s was apparently so shitty that the company ran an ad campaign that got written up in Time Magazine for its zaniness:

The neat middle-aged executive peers out from the television screen. "Hello," he says, his face crinkling into a sheepish grin. "I'm from General Telephone." Boos and hisses explode off-camera. "Now, I'm aware that General Telephone provides less than adequate service." Plop. A rotten tomato slides down his chin. "But we're spending $200 million in California this year on improving our service." He is hit with an egg. "Cables, switches, personnel, everything." A cream pie splatters over his face. "Thank you for your patience," he mumbles through the goo.

The spots were put together by DDB, the mega-firm responsible for the Volkswagen "Lemon" campaign that is generally regarded as the best ad of all time. It also used some reverse-psychology voodoo, but in the more traditional sense of treating perceived negatives as positives.

That's a Saturn? - 2006

Car companies are great at this. Taking the conception of a Saturn as a prissy, gutless nerdmobile and moving it up front here obviously makes today's model seem all the more shockingly stunning. Mmm hmm. And of course, on the same theme, we all remember this tune:

Sure, Fords used to suck, but have you driven one....lately?

Prudential Securities - 1994
Facing a huge fraud scandal, Prudential's comeback "Straight Talk" campaign is a perfect example of corporate damage control, using chief exec Hardwick Simmons (yes, real name) in a no-frills admission of guilt. NY Times says:

The campaign, by Deutsch/Dworin Inc. in New York, is imbued with cues intended to underscore the "straight talk" theme. The television commercials and print advertisements, which eschew celebrity endorsers, feature Prudential employees, from brokers to Mr. Simmons, who is called by his nickname, Wick.

The campaign also rejects slick, glitzy production values, using instead a minimalist approach: black-and-white photography, seemingly unrehearsed remarks read off note paper and directed at the camera.

"I'm straight with people and I expect the same," Mr. Simmons says in one commercial, "from my brokers to my kids." In a print version, in which frank statements are superimposed over his photograph so that he stands behind them — get it? — he declares straight talk "also means facing up to hard issues — admitting mistakes and fixing them."

Avis - We Try Harder - 1962

And why do they try harder? Because they're #2. In competition with #1 Hertz, Avis cranked on all the positives that being the cute, hard-working underdog can bring. And they're using the same tagline to this day.

"This was an incredibly effective, incredibly powerful campaign," says Thompson. They acknowledged that they were number two and used it as an asset to sell. We're going to be runnning faster, trying harder, etc. Turned a liability into a huge asset."

All of these campaigns are about putting the dark past behind us in exchange for a shiny next generation of new and improved products and services. But with Vista, where is the new product? What's going to replace users' frustrations? Telling them they're too stupid to cut through all the bad Vista press and realize what a gem they've been missing out on will not make people feel great about themselves or the future of Windows.

"It is a useless exercise to take an unchanged product and try to persuade people that their perceptions are wrong. Vista has a bad reputation because it doesn't work well. It is an earned reputation, the only way to address it...is to change," says Bob Garfield, an advertising journalist who writes for Ad Age and other publications. "I haven't seen anyone I can think of try to do this with a discrete product, as opposed to a service."

The intended audience here is obviously novice users. But novice users aren't dumb users. The first question this campaign pops into those peoples' heads is, "Why have so many people said that Vista sucks?" They're going to research it. They're going to find out. A trick like Mojave isn't going to fool them.

Before the comments erupt into flames, it should be obvious that this is not about Vista sucking or not, but whether the newest Vista ads suck or not. Should a huge, important company have thought twice before doing something so kamikaze-like? Desperation calls for desperate measures, but unfortunately for Microsoft, kamikazes are rarely on the winning side.

There are surely way more instances of this happening—shoot any more great "we suck" ads in the comments.

[Big thanks to Ray at Jalopnik, Bob Garfield, Prof. Bob Thompson, Kipp Cheng at AAAA and Prof. Don Sexton at Columbia Business School]

[Space Invaders via Not Cot]

[YouTube]

While the first go-round pretty much looked like a few dudes running around Tokyo with a Handycam, this new release's production value has upped considerably—complete with faux-vintage film grain look and a kickin' soundtrack. We've also got a cute maid from a maid cafe, spam puns, an evil botnet named Botlas and a stunning Akihabara nerd attack! I won't ruin the rest for you—check out part two below. My hat's off to whoever Symantec is using for this ad campaign. Bravo. Now if only their software was as svelte as the yellow-suited future ninja they have advertising it.

[via Japan Probe]