A long time ago IBM tried selling PCs using one of the world’s most beloved symbols of innocent, non-corporate fun: Charlie Chaplin’s famous Little Tramp character. Following swift on the heels of the advent of this campaign came the inevitable parodies. The one I remember the best ran in a humor magazine (National Lampoon, if memory serves). On one side of the ad was the “public icon,” the Little Tramp extolling the virtues of purchasing a personal computer from IBM. On the other side was the “in-house corporate icon,” The Great Dictator outlining IBM’s labor practices and various other misdeeds.
Thanks to my DVR and the advent of baseball’s off-season, I’m not currently watching a lot of television advertising. But Mrs. Lens and I have gotten hooked on the Hi-I’m-a-Mac-And-I’m-a-PC ads. Some of them are clever. They’re cheap enough to produce that Apple doesn’t have to keep showing the same ones over and over again (an excellent advertising strategy that more companies should seriously consider adopting). But more than anything else, as Mac users we still seem to need occasional reassurance that we’re the cool kids and the majority of computer users are dorks.
But earlier this week I saw one of these things that actually ticked me off. In this go-around, PC hired a PR flak to answer questions about problems with the Windows Vista operating system. Whatever PC said about it would be re-interpreted by the flak. Most of this was innocuous enough. But when PC admitted that the first release of Vista had some serious bugs in it, the PR woman bent this around to “Some early adopters experienced a few difficulties” or words to that effect.
Who the hell does Apple think it is picking on anyone else for releasing insect-ridden products? The iPhone debacle that prompted the company to offer discount coupons to overcharged “early adopters” should by itself have made this a point of embarrassment to the company.
But of course those of us with longer, more extensive experience with Apple know that the iPhone thing was not a fluke. I would be humiliated to admit how many times I installed the new Mac operating system before letting at least two or three revisions drift by. And if you really want to know how willing Apple is to screw its own customers, dig back into computer history and see if you can find someone who bought the Lisa. Or instead, try finding someone who will admit to buying the Lisa.
This mistake is especially damaging to the Mac’s product position. The last thing anyone at the too-cool-for-school table in the lunchroom wants to hear is that we’re all secretly the thing we hate most: witless stooges eating a big plate of corporate propaganda. Even if that’s what we really are, it’s a mistake to call our attention to it.
So dump on the suckers all you want, Apple. Just don’t throw your own customers into the sucker basket.
PS - Don't forget Buy Nothing Day this Friday!
No comments:
Post a Comment