Bite Out of the Apple

After more than two decades of getting drummed by the Apple marketing department, the marketing executives at Microsoft may have finally delivered their first real blow to the once-revolutionary Apple creative team.

In what’s arguably its first really effective, entertaining, humorous and human advertising campaign, Microsoft’s commercials that play off of Apple’s Mac Guy versus PC Guy (“I’m a PC and I’m not a total stereotype of a dweeb”) actually succeed in turning Apple’s message upside down by taking what was created as negative and making it a complete positive. Funny thing is: it was actually Apple’s missteps that set up the punch from Microsoft in the first place.

Apple apparently forgot that when it comes to straight man/funny man combinations, people tend to like the funny man. Whether it’s Abbott & Costello, Bugs Bunny & Elmer Fudd or Gilligan & Skipper, we like the characters who make us laugh. Yet the Apple copywriters gave all the jokes, all the costumes and all the gimmicks to the PC Guy, leaving the Mac Guy standing there with a self-righteous and judgmental smug on his face time after time.

The PC Guys has sat on the throne, dressed like the King from Burger King; peeped his head from a pizza box, trying to lure college student; been ducked taped; bloated; blown up; in a wheel chair; on a yoga mat; shaven; and decked out like a spy. The Mac Guy just stands there looking “cool” and completely boring.

Even consider the initial casting. We can see the actor who plays the PC Guy on stage doing stand up and sometimes appearing on the Jon Stewart Show. The claim to fame for the actor playing Mac Guy is his role as the lovable loser opposite Lindsay Lohan in Herbie Fully Loaded.

Which personality would you rather be associated with as a consumer?

Maybe it’s not so surprising (and somehow related) when we hear the latest Changewave figures suggesting that Apple sales are cooling off, after grabbing some significant steam since the launch of the iPod. In the survey, the percentage of technology consumers who plan to buy a Mac in the next 90 days had dropped from 34% in August to 29% in September, the biggest such decline in more than two years.

Score one for Microsoft marketing.

A Digital Divide

It’s often assumed the Internet and digital transmissions are a more eco-friendly form of information distribution compared to legacy forms such as print, mail, fax, etc. But as further evidence of how everything has its impact and few things are truly black & white when it comes to being green, we have to keep in mind how the increasing number of data centers required to handle the massive information flows generated by the Web, and the super computers housed in those data centers, use massive amounts of electricity to ensure they don’t overheat.

Back in 2005, even before online video became ubiquitous, data centers consumed 1 percent of the world’s electricity. And despite efforts to make data centers more efficient, a study by McKinsey and the Uptime Institute estimates that by 2020 the carbon footprint of the super computers that run the Internet will be larger than that of the entire world’s air travel.

And that doesn’t even include the power required to run every individual users’ PC or laptop in all those homes and offices.

The 80-20 Rule

Still think consumers will absorb a 20 percent price premium for products with a sustainable or eco-friendly story? Well a recent survey by cultural trend tracking firm BrainReserve might have you thinking otherwise.

According to the study, the economic environment is still weighing heavily on consumers minds, with close to 80 percent of folks saying a 20 percent price increase would be too much to bear.

Consumers even are becoming less willing to pay more for stuff that’s better for their own bodies, much less than planet. Nearly half (44%) of U.S adults report that their diets are becoming less healthy as food prices rise, with 52% buying fewer organic products and 48% spending less on health and wellness overall, says the BrainReserve study.

As far as price increases go, 73 percent of adults say a 20 percent increase in the cost of apparel would result cutbacks. If soda, juice and bottled water prices increase 20%, seven in 10 adults say they will reduce their purchases, 58% say they'll switch to private-label brands and 36% say they will eliminate the category completely, say the findings. Even among refrigerator staples, a 20% price hike for milk would make 44% cut back, and a 22% hike would cause 25% to stop buying milk altogether.

"Price increases have a straight-line impact on spending and we're treading in lethal waters as the costs of basics jump 10, 15 or 20%," says BrainReserve’s Faith Popcorn.
"There's very little that's safe in commerce today, beyond value channels and value brands in staple categories."