Microsoft's Lauren ad faked say bloggers

[AppleInsider]

Accusations are flying within the blogosphere that Microsoft simply faked its latest ad portraying a real buyer named Lauren shopping for a 17" notebook under $1000, who supposedly couldn't find what she was looking for in the Apple Store.

Bloggers forensically studied the advertisement in slow motion, pointing out that the shots of Lauren entering and leaving the store appear to have been shot all at once; the surrounding people walking past in both shots appear in the same place. This must mean, they conclude, that Lauren never entered the store looking for the $1000 17" notebook, and that the ad simply included a scene at "the Mac store" to offer Apple some additional free advertising.

Of course, it doesn't really matter if Lauren walked into the store and spent any length of time there. The entire ad was contrived by definition. Lauren wasn't given money to find the ideal computer for her needs, she was given a specific budget and told to find a specific hardware feature that Apple does not carry.

Apple only sells one 17" notebook with a high quality, full resolution screen. No PC maker ships anything comparable to the MacBook Pro for under $1000. As the ad points out however, there are plenty of low quality, low resolution 17" screens available from PC makers trying to dangle low prices in front of consumers in the overcrowded, low differentiation market for low end, generic PCs that ship with Windows Vista.

Why would Microsoft's production company waste its time following Lauren around the Apple Store with a camera, when they knew full well that the PC definition they'd cooked up wasn't one of the three simple notebook family members Apple offers? And why would Lauren, a member of the Screen Actor's Guild, waste her time acting out a role that she wasn't even making union wages on?

Lauren may well have simply been looking for a free computer on Craigslist, and not intending to act out a fake role for Microsoft. After all, pretty much everyone in LA is in the SAG, just as everyone in San Francisco is a DJ. Nobody has uncovered Microsoft's ad script telling Lauren to pretend to fruitlessly search among Apple's notebook offerings for a period of time. The company didn't need to do that; it merely wanted to create the suggestion that Lauren failed to find a specific combination of features because she "wasn't cool enough for a Mac," and that Apple's products are too elite and smart and customers should fear them with angry resentment.

Watch Lauren never really enter the Apple Store.

Microsoft's pattern of contrived marketing

It's certainly not anything new to find Microsoft itself putting together contrived attacks of the Mac. During Apple's Switchers campaign, Microsoft ran a print ad entitled "Confessions of a Mac to PC convert," portraying a professionally dressed woman complaining about her Mac stating, "Yes, it's true. I like the Microsoft Windows XP operating system enough to change my whole computing world around. [...] Windows XP gives me more choices and flexibility and better compatibility with the rest of the computing world."

It turned out that Microsoft's "convert" was a stock photography model from Getty Library, and her adspeak was written by a freelance writer Microsoft hired. When the sham convert was exposed by the BBC, Microsoft yanked the ad and killed the copycat campaign, but not before it generated more free publicity for Apple.

Microsoft has since copied Apple's Get a Mac ads, this time replacing comic actor John Hodgman in the role of a Bill Gates-inspired PC character with a real person: a Microsoft employee named Sean who acted out his virtual victimization as a generic PC with the line "I'm a PC and I've been made into a stereotype."

Microsoft tried to promote his identity as a sympathetic character by adding a sean@windows.com email address in the ad. Somewhat ironically, that attempt at viral PC marketing did not take off nearly as well as the typical PC virus. Instead, it was reported that Microsoft had used Macs to create its ads maligning Apple's platform and suggesting that PCs could do anything and everything better.

Microsoft ads promoting Macs

Microsoft returned to its roots with a Songsmith ad that clearly did not use professional actors, this time portraying its new software running on a Mac notebook. Bloggers suggested this was an effort to promote the new program by attaching a contrived controversy of Microsoft using a MacBook in its advertising. That too fell flat, with viewers left in shock by the ad's embarrassing production values and its cringe-inducing music voiced by stilted, soulless shells lacking any personality.

Microsoft's Songsmith promotional video.

The company's inability to effectively market Windows, a product that seemingly shouldn't need marketing as a utility monopoly in the generic PC market, is particularly hard to fathom given Microsoft's vast resources. The company went from hiring bad actors to spending $10 million to bring on Jerry Seinfeld for a couple ads that trail off into cancelation before that campaign ever got around to pitching the product.

Microsoft's $300 million marketing campaign, which the company itself touted to the press, has also been used as fodder in Apple's advertisements, which poke fun at Microsoft for throwing money at ineffective marketing rather than addressing efforts to actually solve the problems Windows Vista users were experiencing.

Microsoft even launched the Mojave Experiment campaign to suggest that real users weren't actually experiencing problems with Vista, and that the software was really just a victim of unfair press coverage. If anything, that effort directed even more attention to the actual problems in Vista.

Microsoft might not be actually sending its advertisement's actors into Apple's retail stores as it films its commercials (and the Apple Store probably wouldn't allow a film crew in anyway), but the real problem for Microsoft's shoppers is that the company has to acknowledge that too many real PC shoppers are headed to the Apple Store, and many are buying a Mac. And while those Macs can run Windows, few actually will. If this keeps up, Microsoft is in danger of losing the remains of the PC market that actually matter, the higher quality sales above $1000 where sustainable profits are made.

If the company isn't careful, it will find itself stuck in price comparisons with Apple that only highlight how much cheaper Linux PCs can be without Windows, and usability comparisons with Linux that highlight how much more attractive Macs are to buyers who don't want to deal with complication.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[hmurchison]

Don't buy PC



She should be able to afford a Mac. I'm betting cold hard cash she doesn't eat.

[Virgil-TB2]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Accusations are flying within the blogosphere that Microsoft simply faked its latest ad portraying a real buyer named Lauren shopping for a 17" notebook under $1000, who supposedly couldn't find what she was looking for in the Apple Store....

WTF?

Why is this news? Did anyone really think she was a real consumer?

It's not like the USA has any truth in advertising laws that would make this illegal or anything. Do people believe that the grainy films of "Mr. Schnieder" on the wiener commercials are real too? Or that the housewives on the Swiffer commercials are as well?

[e1618978]

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1026308/

Ellen Feiss was way better.

[CU10]

She's famous now, that's for sure. I bet she owns a Mac.

The SAG membership argument isn't so convincing; anyone, even non-union can audition for these commercials.

[cuencap]

No doubt the entire commercial is fake.

Check out the final Best Buy checkout price: $699.99

Where's the tax!?? hahaha

[slapppy]

I can't take that Songsmith ad/video. It makes my skin crawl and I feel sick all over if I continue to watch it.

[jazzguru]

Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2

WTF?

Why is this news? Did anyone really think she was a real consumer?

It's not like the USA has any truth in advertising laws that would make this illegal or anything. Do people believe that the grainy films of "Mr. Schnieder" on the wiener commercials are real too? Or that the housewives on the Swiffer commercials are as well?

The commercial certainly tries to make you think she is a real consumer, doesn't it? Is it illegal? Heck no. Is it misleading and deceptive? Heck yes. That's the point the article makes.

[solipsism]

That commercial is far from proof that she never entered an Apple Store to look for a 17" PC under $1000. All it shows is the typical editing that is used. For all we know there were something they noticed later that made the exiting of the store shots unusable. We see at 8 seconds that they split up her sentence about the 13" MB being the only one at $1000 into two takes. None of this should be a surprise to anyone. Of all the things to mock MS over this is the weakest I've seen.

[Retrogusto]

Looks like she already did a "Columbine Reenactment" so buying a PC on camera should be no big deal.

[charlituna]

Originally Posted by CU10

She's famous now, that's for sure. I bet she owns a Mac.

The SAG membership argument isn't so convincing; anyone, even non-union can audition for these commercials.

yes the non union can audition but if the contract is SAG, there's a fine to pay if you hire someone that isn't SAG. which I'm sure Microsoft can afford.

the real reason why she wasn't followed into the store when she went into Apple is because they would never allow it. no company would allow someone to come in and film an ad for someone else when said party is looking to bad mouth them.

so they had no choice but to stand on the street, which is a public place, and film her walking in and out. still they were dumb for not having her go in, goof off for ten minutes and then come back out when there were different folks on the street. she could have used the time to check her Hotmail.

and I love how they dowdy her up to make her seem all 'everyman'. they probably would have gotten more hits on their little web ad if they hadn't done it. horny boys would load it up just to drool over her boobs.

[sisyphus]

wow that songsmith commercial is vile, the moment the singing started it felt like a swift kick to the groin

[djdj]

In all fairness, have all of Apple's ads been 100% honest? Certainly not.

Can you do everything on an iPhone in 30 seconds that they show on the ad? Nope.

Are all of the "facts" stated in the "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads accurate? Certainly not.

Do MacBook Pros really get 8 hours of battery life in real-world use? No.

Let's not get nitpicky over a few details when Apple themselves haven't been exactly 100% forthcoming in their ads either. It's advertising; it's the way it is done.

[cinder]

RE: the songsmith video

1. Many of the 'actors' are MS employees.
The main character (Dan Morris) and the Indian male customer (Sumit Basu) are the creators of Songsmith
The Indian female barista/customer (Latika Kirtane) is a product manager

2. It's supposed to be cheesy/bad, the creator Sumit mentions in interviews that he loves really loves akwardly cheesy stuff.

HOWEVER, I don't think this changes anything.

If it's supposed to be bad, it's so intentionally bad that it actually becomes bad again - and then surpasses that to become horribly bad and then laughably bad but is still so bad that it becomes terribly bad . . . and circles back around again to be just plain bad.


If you look at Sumit's other 'serious' work - it is also . . . bad.

[lightstriker]

anyone showing that much enthusiasm for buying ANY computer, wether PC, Mac, or Linux, is acting or just plain crazy. Who here has done cartwheels upon receiving a new Mac?

[cassnate6259]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Accusations are flying within the blogosphere that Microsoft simply faked its latest ad portraying a real buyer named Lauren shopping for a 17" notebook under $1000, who supposedly couldn't find what she was looking for in the Apple Store.

Oh yeah? Well the guys in the Mac vs. PC commercials aren't actually computers, they're just people who CLAIM that they're computers! Totally misleading.

HUMAN! (Not Mac)

[lightstriker]

I am an American. I am from China. I hate censorship. But... to never read the word "songsmith", I am willing to turn AppleInsider over to the Breen Office (Hays Code).

[bryanhauer]

It's clear from her website's news page that even she was somewhat deceived by M$ and clearly wasn't looking to purchase a PC or go to an Apple Store to look for a computer. Obviously it's no surprise M$ would try to use actors, but I agree that the way the ad is... it portrays Lauren as being a real computer shopper which is simply not true.

Oh btw... gotta love people with websites where the site is just one big image Can't imagine she's getting much work through search engines.

[noirdesir]

Originally Posted by solipsism

That commercial is far from proof that she never entered an Apple Store to look for a 17" PC under $1000. All it shows is the typical editing that is used. For all we know there were something they noticed later that made the exiting of the store shots unusable. We see at 8 seconds that they split up her sentence about the 13" MB being the only one at $1000 into two takes. None of this should be a surprise to anyone. Of all the things to mock MS over this is the weakest I've seen.

Good parody/comedy etc. has a true core which in this case is that MS struggles to find a marketing message. Well and maybe that MS does somewhat sloppy work (how much would it have cost to cut the Apple Store scene in a way that it would not have as obvious? Next to nothing, but MS somehow attention to detail was never MS's strong point.
I am simplifying for effect but there really is some truth in advertising.

[igxqrrl]

Sheesh.

Next thing you know, they'll tell us that Justin Long and that fat "I'm a PC" guy didn't actually have those spontaneous conversations.

[jazzguru]

Originally Posted by djdj

In all fairness, have all of Apple's ads been 100% honest? Certainly not.

Can you do everything on an iPhone in 30 seconds that they show on the ad? Nope.

Are all of the "facts" stated in the "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads accurate? Certainly not.

Do MacBook Pros really get 8 hours of battery life in real-world use? No.

Let's not get nitpicky over a few details when Apple themselves haven't been exactly 100% forthcoming in their ads either. It's advertising; it's the way it is done.

Well obviously advertisements are going to paint their featured product/service in as positive a light as possible compared to the competitors.

Microsoft is trying to present advertisements in which it appears that nothing was scripted, they just found a random person, gave that person a specific budget, and had them go find a computer with the features they wanted and they just happened to settle on a Windows PC. That's what it appears to be at first glance.

But as this article so adeptly points out, it's simply not the case. The whole thing was contrived, probably scripted, and controlled by Microsoft the entire way.

Same with the Mojave Experiment ads. The "experiment" was nothing more than a carefully staged show meant to look like something it wasn't. Microsoft supplied the hardware that ran Vista and had a person right there at the controls showing these people what Mojave (Vista) could do.

If they had these people bring in their own computers running XP and tried to upgrade them to Vista, the "experiment" probably would have had less enthusiastic results.

I see a difference between this kind of advertising and the "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads. In the Mac ads, it's obvious the guys are actors. The Mac ads are clever, relevant, and focus on Mac's strengths vs Windows PC's weaknesses.

Microsoft's "Lauren ad" doesn't even mention Microsoft's software. And they're a software company, aren't they?

[brlawyer]

Originally Posted by djdj

In all fairness, have all of Apple's ads been 100% honest? Certainly not.

Can you do everything on an iPhone in 30 seconds that they show on the ad? Nope.

Are all of the "facts" stated in the "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads accurate? Certainly not.

Do MacBook Pros really get 8 hours of battery life in real-world use? No.

Let's not get nitpicky over a few details when Apple themselves haven't been exactly 100% forthcoming in their ads either. It's advertising; it's the way it is done.

DEAD WRONG. All of Apple's ads are honest, especially because they don't pretend to be someone else in disguise. MS's is illegal advertisement punishable in many countries, and VERY different from what any honest company does.

Everything that is said in the PC x Mac ads is AT LEAST correct yet biased information (even if it doesn't mean that you will always get a virus on a PC).

For the batteries, EVERY Apple website disclaims CLEARLY the limitations of battery life, or the fact they LAST UP TO 8 hours, not always 8 hours.

As for the iPhone, there IS a disclaimer on the commercial saying that some actions might take longer than 30 secs...so check your facts before posting, please.

[nw3227]

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose:
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/03/bu...isleading.html

[Virgil-TB2]

Originally Posted by bryanhauer

It's clear from her website's news page that even she was somewhat deceived by M$ ...

You shouldn't believe everything you read on the web though.

If you think about it for a second, there is no way Lauren could have been fooled into thinking it was a "market research survey" beyond the point at which she showed up for the first shoot. She probably knew about it even sooner than that.

The ad clearly shows actors walking back and forth on the sidewalk when she enters the Apple store and the same actors again, when she leaves it. If she was being fooled into thinking it was market research, the actors should have tipped her off. If they were really trying hard to fool her (doubtful), they would have even filmed the scenes in sequence so she would have known from the first scene that it was a commercial.

You'd have to be an idiot of the first order to ever think this was a real consumer and pretty dumb to think that maybe she is an actress but was "fooled" into thinking it's market research.

The only rational reason for the film crew *not* letting her in on their intentions would be that they want to "reveal" the truth to her at the end and film her reaction (which they didn't), so why wouldn't they tell her when she first arrives on set (or even sooner) what the deal is?

[bryanhauer]

Originally Posted by italiankid

No commercial is real. That goes for every company. Including Apple"s famous 30 sec Ad showing the iPhone doing super fast things. In real life it's 4x slower. So microsoft has every right to do an Ad as such.

Ummm hater... have you ever even watched an iPhone ad? Doesn't take a genius to figure out they shortened the sequence while shooting the ad. And get this... Apple even tells you this right in the ad. How genius?

[shodson]

Originally Posted by cuencap

No doubt the entire commercial is fake.

Check out the final Best Buy checkout price: $699.99

Where's the tax!?? hahaha

Some states don't have sales tax.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by bryanhauer

Ummm hater... have you ever even watched an iPhone ad? Doesn't take a genius to figure out they shortened the sequence while shooting the ad. And get this... Apple even tells you this right in the ad. How genius?

I'm pretty sure that only popped up pretty recently. They did not have that disclaimer on their earlier ads. I don't know if the disclaimer is really necessary though, but the editing is very subtle, I don't recall any visible transitions or anything to tell the audience that time has passed, if it weren't for the disclaimer.

[anantksundaram]

".....its cringe-inducing music voiced by stilted, soulless shells lacking any personality...."

Wow. Gotta love that.

[RichL]

Let's not start slinging mud over advertising campaigns.

Remember that at least three high profile Apple adverts have been banned in the UK for misleading consumers.

[CU10]

Originally Posted by cassnate6259

Oh yeah? Well the guys in the Mac vs. PC commercials aren't actually computers, they're just people who CLAIM that they're computers! Totally misleading.

LOL. I like Macs, but I like the PC guy better for some reason.

[satchmo]

Hmm...must be a slow news day.
This is regurgitating the same stuff that's already been talked about ad naseum
the past week and a half.

[Guartho]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Bloggers forensically studied the advertisement in slow motion, pointing out that the shots of Lauren entering and leaving the store appear to have been shot all at once; the surrounding people walking past in both shots appear in the same place. This must mean, they conclude, that Lauren never entered the store looking for the $1000 17" notebook, and that the ad simply included a scene at "the Mac store" to offer Apple some additional free advertising.

Everyone who appears recognizable in an ad has to sign a photo/likeness release or you can't use them in your ads. Odds are everyone not-Lauren in those shots is a paid extra and they wandered around for the 2 or 3 takes they shot before the Apple Store staff chased them off.

This isn't so much Microsoft sleight-of-hand as it is the simple reality of video production.

[GTL215]

Originally Posted by lightstriker

Who here has done cartwheels upon receiving a new Mac?

I have.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Apple only sells one 17" notebook with a high quality, full resolution screen. No PC maker ships anything comparable to the MacBook Pro for under $1000. As the ad points out however, there are plenty of low quality, low resolution 17" screens available from PC makers trying to dangle low prices in front of consumers in the overcrowded, low differentiation market for low end, generic PCs that ship with Windows Vista.

The ad doesn't try to say it's an equivalent computer. It's marketed as a professional computer too, with features that consumers might never use. I see no problem with other companies marketing consumer computers with the same screen size, I think it's pretty silly to associate the 15" and 17" screen sizes as a professional feature when anyone can benefit from a larger screen.

Also, crunching the numbers, the 17" model in question has a 100ppi screen. I recall a time a few years ago when Apple officially resisted going beyond 100ppi citing usability studies showing that 100ppi is about right for most typical people to comfortably use, because higher pixel densities mean that UI elements and screen text gets pretty tiny. Apple (and Apple fans) were basically saying that companies going beyond 100ppi were doing their users a disservice. Now, I guess the roles have reversed, though really, I don't think 125 and 133ppi screens are doing older users any favors.

[elroth]

Originally Posted by italiankid

you are an idiot. what if she bought it in Erie PA?

It was in Los Angeles, genius.

[elroth]

Originally Posted by shodson

Some states don't have sales tax.

And California is one of those states? No.

[FuturePastNow]

Of course she's an actress. No company would ever grab a person off the street to put in a commercial. Don't be stupid.

[monkeyastronaut]

jeeez, of course it's all fake, and of course everybody does that! That's the purpose of ads! They trick you into buying shit. People at McDonald's aren't as joyful when they sell you hamburgers. The Wendy's owner was never at the place when I visited. And the Verizon guy has never come by my house checking the wireless signal. Sprint's CEO does not walk NYC in black and white taking to himself.

Danielle Dilger you are the worst pseudo journalist on the internet. How sad.

[monkeyastronaut]

Originally Posted by elroth

And California is one of those states? No.

It doesn't matter if it's CA or PA. It's an AD. Not *real* life. Not real, all staged, like American Idol, Wife Swapping Reality Shows, The Steelers' Super Bowl wins, etc... pick your poison.

[teckstud]

I can't believe we get yet another ridiculous Microsoft bashing thread from AI. Like WTF? As if? Who cares?
Where's the more important sheet like the Woz getting booting off DWTS or the Queen of England receiving an iPod from the President of the United States?
Come on AI- you can do better.