Inside Steve's Brain - Leander Kahney [51]
Between the big, bold, brand-building campaigns, like “Think Different” and the iPod silhouettes, Apple mixes in more traditional product advertising. These promotions focus on specific products, like the “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” campaign, which dramatized why it makes sense to buy an Apple computer.
The campaign represented the rival Mac and Windows platforms as two people. Up-and-coming actor Justin Long personified the effortlessly cool Mac, while comedian and author John Hodgman represented the nerdy, accident-prone PC. In one spot, Hodgman has a cold. He’s contracted a virus. He offers Long, the Mac, a handkerchief, which Long politely declines because Macs are largely immune to computer viruses. In thirty seconds, the spot cleverly and economically conveyed a message about computer viruses. The ads created a memorable, dramatic situation—more so than HP’s individuals showing the contents of their computer.
Like “Think Different,” the campaign had a big impact. It enjoyed a high profile and was widely parodied—a good measure of a campaign’s cultural impact.
“They create this stuff that gets into the culture,” said Berger. “Soon enough people are talking about it, and it gets into others’ advertising. You see the same layouts, the same motifs, in other ads, in magazine and newspaper layouts. There’s a whole graphic design look; suddenly other advertisers have embraced it. The ‘Think Different’ posters. People put them on their wall. That’s really successful advertising. The ads became a phenomenon. You didn’t have to pay people to pass it around.”
Not everyone loves Apple’s advertising. Seth Godin, author of several best sellers about marketing, said Apple’s advertising has often been mediocre. “I’m underwhelmed by most of Apple’s advertising,” he told me by phone from his office in New York. “It’s not been effective. Apple’s advertising is more about pandering to the insiders than acquiring new users. If you have a Mac, you love Apple’s advertising because it says ‘I’m smarter than you.’ If you don’t have a Mac it says ‘you’re stupid.’”26
The “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” ads have been described as unbearably smug. Many critics couldn’t stand Justin Long’s self-consciously hip Mac character, who had the poise and self-assurance that annoys some people. The stubble and a casual hoodie added to the irritation. Many in the target audience identified more with Hodgman’s nebbish PC character, who was endearingly bumbling.
“I hate Macs,” wrote British comedian Charlie Booker in a critique of the ads. “I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don’t use Macs but sometimes wish they did. . . . PCs have charm; Macs ooze pretension. When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, ‘I hate Macs’, and then I think, ‘Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?’ ”
Booker said the campaign’s biggest problem is that it “perpetuates the notion that consumers somehow ‘define themselves’ with the technology they choose.”
He continues, “If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that ‘says something’ about your personality, don’t bother. You don’t have a personality. A mental illness, maybe—but not a personality.”27
Conversely, the “Switchers” campaign, which ran in the early 2000s, was ripped for portraying Apple customers as losers. The campaign, shot by Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris, featured a series of ordinary people who had recently switched from Windows computers to Macs. Looking straight into Morris’s camera, they explained the reasons they had switched and the problems they had been having with Windows, and rhapsodized their new love affair with the Mac. Trouble was, most seemed like they were running away from their problems. They couldn’t cope, and they had given up.
“Apple couldn’t have picked a starker collection of life’s losers with which to promote the Macintosh,” wrote journalist Andrew Orlowski.28 “The message is a mass of conflicting signals. Having portrayed the Mac as the computer for overachievers, it’s now suggesting