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The Smug Look of Satisfaction
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The quintessential smirk of superiority.
Apple started running a few new ads in the last couple days. They don't really directly poke at the Laptop Hunter ads from Microsoft, but they bring up some good points with all the whimsical Mac snarkyness you'd come to expect.
"Customer Care" stresses the point about the availability of a real live person for tech support with a cute Mac Genius girl accompanying Justing Long. John Hodgman has a flashback about his PC's woes which all happen on the phone with Tech support. This, of course, is emphasizing the point that you can make an appointment at any Apple store and bring in your Mac to get looked at by a Mac Genius.
"Elimination" features another cute girl with a row of other men dressed as 'PC's' with John Hodgman as the leader. She's looking for a specific kind of computer. With each progressive feature she looks for, groups of PC's walk off screen since they don't match the profile. Eventually, even John Hodgman walks off the screen after the girl wants a "something that works without crashing or viruses or a ton of headaches." Justin Long extends a hand; "I'm a Mac," she responds "I'm a Megan!" Here, Apple stresses the personalizing and warmth of a Mac.
"PC Choice Chat" features Hodgman as a radio host helping people pick the right PC. Unfortunately for him, all the callers either are looking for something easy, virus free, or in the case of the last caller, is looking to switch to a Mac. Hodgman brushes them off as crank calls or disconnects the callers. Mac stands there, looking smug. The only phrase he utters is "Oh, I can help with that" when the first caller asks about a computer for someone who hates viruses. The fact that Mac just stands there, looking amused, seems the perfectly simple statement Apple wants to make.
While Apple continues this Mac and PC commercial campaign, which, is effective in itself, there's a part of me that wishes Apple would just straight up say what makes Macs so much better. They could easily spend a 30 second spot displaying a really cool feature of OS X and then letting you know it comes free with every Mac. Imagine a GarageBand commercial where a kid in front of a keyboard lays down a track and exports it to the 'net. How about an iWork commercial showing how Macs can be productive too. How about a commercial featuring the simple ease and integration between apps in OS X? Mail, Safari, iCal?
Figure, Mac ads a-la iPhone ads. On occasion, Apple includes some tidbit of information like this through Justin Long, but if they actually showed demonstrations, they could pull in a lot more people and detract from the misleading Microsoft ads without directly addressing them.
Apple always has their own agenda, so who knows what their marketing team is working on? But as a Mac fan, there would be some sort of vindication in Apple boasting its technological britches to the world.
For now, we'll just have to enjoy the musings of John and Justin.
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