Apple responds to M$ "I'm a PC" Advert

I just thought it'd be worth posting this as I noticed Microsoft have started running their "I'm a PC" ad on British TV. It's worth shedding some light on where it came from, and Apple's response.

Here's the story...
Fro some reason that's genuinely beyond me, Microsoft felt sufficiently threatened by Apple's ongoing "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads where John Hodgman and Justin Long take on the personalities of said hardware, that they decided they needed to spend some $300 million on a big-guns response.

I'll just say that again... $300 million.

First thing they did was they decided to make this response about three years after Apple's ads started running. D'oh!

Second thing they did was run two ads of Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld in shopping malls and foisting themselves on a small family home. This was one of the most baffling and creepy things on TV since Twin Peaks quite frankly. Oh and it contained less humour than Twin Peaks.

Third thing they did was do a "direct" response to the "I'm a Mac" ads - with one tiny flaw... Instead of people pretending to be PCs (and explaining their network problems, rebooting problems etc) they paraded a vast number of ethnically diverse people from all over the globe who appeared to believe that they were in fact actually PCs. ("I'm a PC and I have a beard", "I'm a PC and I catch fish"...) This was clearly intended to be a big smiley touchy feely "We are the world" moment for M$ but again it ended up being kind of - well... bloody peculiar. Honestly - just watch it through. These people need sectioning.

In short M$ flung an obscene amount of money at a campaign that fundamentally misunderstands what it's supposed to be countering, and in the case of the Seinfeld/Gates home invaders just doesn't attempt to really do anything connected to any kind of reality.
All this while they could have actually been fixing the PR disaster that is Vista.
Apple's response - you can't call it a 'rebuttal' as there was nothing of any substance to genuinely rebutt - is short and sweet; typically mischievous and very funny.



Sadly - we don't get these over here in the UK. We only got the Mitchell & Webb versions, which - much as it pains me to say it - really just didn't work. They seemed to get quietly discontinued. Probably for the best...
You don't want to run an ad campaign that's not really that good, do you.
Unless you're M$ perhaps...