There’s a new marketing campaign from Microsoft, apparently after the failed Gates-Seinfeld “buddy film” commercials, called The Mojave Experiment.
Here’s the theory: Get together a focus group of some computer-illiterate everyday people who usually use XP (because all they do is look at their local newspaper’s website and check their AOL mail). Show them a demo of Windows Vista before it has any Spyware, bloated anti-virus and firewall upon firewall applications. The result, apparently, is they think it’s some new next-gen operating system that they just have to get their hands on!
Oh, and the best part: When you tell them they can buy this elegant and refined OS known as Vista right freaking now, they just can’t contain themselves.
What the hell is this?
I wonder if Microsoft is getting a refund on all the marketing they’ve done thus far since it looks like the most informative data we see from the Mojave Experiment is that no one knows or cares what Vista is.
The problem with this campaign is with the objective. You’re trying to tell people they have been fooled into believing their friends’ opinions on Vista. Usually these opinions come from people like you (the reader) and me, who might be more technology-savvy than your average user. Our demands are higher and our standards are set to meet those demands. So when someone asks me what they should get when they buy that new laptop, I’m recommending a MacBook. Not because I’m part of the underground anti-Microsoft illuminati, but because Vista inevitably causes problems for the average user.
It just does.
I’m sure if I showed my group of laymen a clean Vista install that they would like it too. In fact, they’d like almost anything. What they don’t like, is the annoyances that are a part of every Windows user’s daily life when they’re trying to be productive with it over the long term.
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