With yesterday’s big news about Surface and with the launch day just ten days away, it comes as no surprise that the Microsoft Surface advertisement blitz is now in full swing. The first advertisement for Surface was released the day of the announcement event back in June, it was a production video that played at the close of the event, which you can see below.
By comparison, the most viewed videos on the Windows YouTube channel is just shy of 1 million hits, and it has nearly triple the views of the Microsoft YouTube channel’s most popular video, showcasing their new logo. Their channel for Windows Phone is much of the same, with the most viewed video being well under 2 million views. Simply put, this sleek video was a hit for Microsoft and built up tremendous buzz about a Microsoft product for the first time in a long while.
Shortly after the Surface event in June some graffiti advertisements began to pop up in several major cities. This relatively low-budget approach just kept Surface on the minds of people in these cities. Obviously the initial announcement was geared towards tech bloggers and tech enthusiasts, and since the announcement left a lot of questions these ads just kept Surface fresh on everyone’s minds. Being from Houston, I never saw any of these ads in person, nor did I see them in my frequent travels around the United States, but here are some from New York City.
From June until this week there wasn’t really much news about Surface, and the only thing I found memorable during this time was a snapshot of Surface cakes at the Windows 8 wrap-up celebration in Redmond. For those Microsoft Fanboys who were clamoring for news about the Surface, any news at all, it was torture. For over three months we’ve had to wait patiently for more information. Then, like a beacon into the night on October 14th the Surface Twitter account went live. This, is the moment the fanboys have been waiting for.
In the early afternoon of Monday October 15th Microsoft guru Paul Thurott announced the following via his Twitter – “You heard it here first: Microsoft’s $400 million Surface ad campaign debuts tonight during Monday Night Football, Dancing with the Stars.” Simply awesome. Well, about the same time the Surface YouTube channel also sprang to life for the first time since June’s launch event. They launched a short 46 second video that went largely unnoticed, the video is a time lapse of one of the street art advertisements mentioned above.
I feel that the commercial is a great way to begin the advertising campaign for the masses. It is catchy and memorable, and gets your attention. In a discussion on Reddit I pointed out to their tech-friendly user base that “The average consumer is wow’d by spectacle, not by specs.” I think this ad will roll for a few weeks to help get market recognition and then in another week or two they’ll focus in with “up close” ads showing the device itself, much like this Windows 8 advertisement.
Again, I believe Microsoft will use the television ads to get people’s attention and the traditional print ads and web ads to help drive home the details. They also seem to be trying to reach out to the internet community to get a better understanding of Surface and Windows 8 by providing behind the scene videos as seen above, and then taking part in social network interactions on Twitter, Facebook and even doing an “Ask me Anything” on Reddit.
It is going to be an interesting and exciting few months as Windows 8, Surface and Windows Phone 8 devices all hit the market. Microsoft will be spending hundreds of millions of dollarson the advertising for Windows 8, Surface and Windows Phone 8 – so we haven’t seen the last of these. Stay tuned as we’ll be on top off all of it as it unfolds, like the fanboys we are. Until then, check out this Surface Overview video which was launched today that sums up the device nicely.
> “The average consumer is wow’d by spectacle, not by specs.”
No.
This is what people who don’t understand advertising always think. They look at Apple ads and think “what? it’s just silhouettes dancing – how is that any different?”
Simple – that was an ad **FOR AN MP3 PLAYER.** It had one spec that people cared about – it played music. This was portrayed by people dancing.
How about the iPhone ads. If I say “There’s an app for that” what do you think? Most likely you think:
- Apple iPhone
- Can do anything
Specifications. Sneaky, sure. But they’re there.
Now let’s look at the Surface ad. What did I learn? I learned it’s an iPad that you have to have a keyboard for.
Whoops.
Heck – if it weren’t for the Surface logo, I’d think the ad was for a new iPad keyboard.
This ad, like the Zune ad, betrays a complete failure to understand how to sell. I’m shocked, because I thought the new VP of Marketing (author of “Can you hear me now?” – which is a spec) would do better than this. My guess is that Steve “We don’t advertise features, we only advertise brands – that’s why our products keep failing in the market” Ballmer rode roughshod over him in a desperate attempt to keep the stock price at 30 for another ten years.
My whole family have Windows Phones, and I love the Surface. But Microsoft is going to screw it up again because they don’t understand marketing.
Well your operating from the notion that people only care about the tablet form factor. But i see the campaign totally different from you. I do see the keyboard being the focuse, yes, but to direct attention to what it is? Which people do now get the answer to…. The only answer they get is Surface, hence they need to do the math but in the process they will also bring along the Surface name.
I think the campaign is quite brilliant. Its heavy branding at a very secretive level, but it works and ive found in the last weeks, that many i know have asked about Surface and the have not felt discomfort saying the name, which is a big obstacle to pass. How many really wanna Galaxy Tab??? Not many…. I have never heard anyone talk about the Galaxy Tab…. Never!
I think it is clear that the “consumption only” devices simply don’t sell well after the initial push. I had a Kindle Fire, and after a few weeks I was so frustrated by it’s limitations that I stopped carrying it. I travel around the country each and every week and simply can’t recall the last time I’ve seen a non-iPad tablet in usage in public (besides the Acer W500 with Windows 8 I carry).
The 7″ form factor simply doesn’t make sense to the masses, especially when smart phone screens are 4+ inches now. There’s a reason Google is making a 10-inch Nexus, but again the limitation of Android will simply frustrate users more than please them. I think in 12 months you will see both Apple and Google both working on and/or releasing tablets with full OS’ (Chrome OS for Google).
Thanks for the comment Philo, but I have to disagree. I think the average consumer is wow’d by pretty colors and catchy dance tunes, if they weren’t reality TV wouldn’t be so popular. Overall the populous has a short attention span and it is getting shorter by the day. You must captivate them before you can covert them.
Microsoft is gearing their Surface advertising to the end consumer, not to the gadget junkie who reads tech blogs, and for once I think that is the right approach. As I said in the article, you wow them for a few weeks then you come back with ads (or supplement with web ads as they have) that show exactly what the device does.
Make a tremendous product, get their attention and then let the product do the talking. I’ll be posting another article tomorrow that builds on all of this that I think explains their plans more clearly. I agree that Microsoft has bumbled their way through marketing for many years, but these are different times. In Sinofsky we trust.