03rd Jun 2005
MS Dinosaur 2005
With Microsoft’s “Evolve” campaign, the company toys with new heights of arrogance.
If you haven’t seen the posters & other ads, the campaign depicts a bunch of Office 97-using office workers. They all have dinosaur heads, and the ad suggests that they “evolve”. As in, “upgrade now”.
Maybe I didn’t take Sales & Marketing 101, but it seems to me that depicting your own customers as dinosaurs because they bought your product a while back is something of an insult. Making fun of your competitors is cool (Apple does this all the time, with posters such as “Redmond, start your photocopiers”). Giving your competitors customers a reason to switch is cool. But insulting your own customers, because they haven’t upgraded?
So what Microsoft is saying is “we have so much market share, and control so many of you, that we can peg you as dinosaurs, and that will prod you into giving us even more money!” Wow.
I do hope that Microsoft customers respond to the arrogance of the “Evolve” campaign. They can take a stroll over to OpenOffice.org.
