Microsoft Ready to Hit Back at Mac Guy

I would love to see microsoft advertise their strength rather than drawbacks of MAC etc !! go MS go

http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/07/09/microsoft-ready-to-hit-back-at-mac-guy/
Microsoft Ready to Hit Back at Mac Guy

Microsoft is set to strike back at Apple and others who have spent the last year and a half criticizing its Windows Vista operating system.
empire_art_160_20080709173057.jpg
Is this image too obvious?

We wrote about Vista’s image problem last winter, when the operating system was facing a barrage of negative press and a clever ad campaign by Apple that alleged Vista was a failure and full of problems. At the time, Microsoft told us that it had no plans for a counteroffensive or even to defend itself against the charges. Instead of acknowledging the attack ads, Microsoft hoped to change minds by continuing to talk up Vista’s benefits.

That didn’t work. Vista’s image is as bad as ever. Even businesses say they’ll avoid upgrading to it, according to one report. Last week, Microsoft replaced the advertising company it used for its business-to-business campaigns. Yesterday, Brad Brooks, a vice president in charge of Windows marketing, speaking at a Microsoft conference, said that the time had come to fight back. Finally.

“We’re drawing a line right here on this stage,” he told a crowd of Microsoft business partners, according to a transcript. “You thought the sleeping giant was still sleeping? Well, we’ve woken up and it’s time to take our message forward,” he added. Brooks specifically mentioned Apple and that company’s “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ads.

Over the next few weeks, Microsoft will roll out an ad campaign intended to change peoples’ minds about Vista. The company is tight-lipped about what those ads will look like, but they should be more aggressive than anything we’ve seen to date. A rather conventional full-page ad for a version of Vista aimed at small businesses that ran in today’s Journal isn’t a part of the campaign, a company spokesperson tells the Business Technology Blog.

So what will the new ads look like? Microsoft isn’t saying, so we’ve come up with some ideas: A hip-looking professionals tries to use business software that doesn’t run on a Mac; a man talks about the improved security in Vista, and we learn at the end of the ad that he’s an Apple employee; a Pepsi-challenge-style computer taste test; a deep-voiced narrator rehashes every strategic blunders Apple has ever made while ominous music plays in the background — paid for by the Friends of Vista, of course.

Any other suggestions for Microsoft’s counterattack?