Tuesday, September 13, 2005- Sun Server ad concepts the Wall Street Journal won't show you
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I'll admit up front that I'm not the world's biggest Sun fan and I'm even less since they jumped in bed with Microsoft last year however from time to time, they will bring a smile to your face.
Be it with a sharp tongued remark from their CEO or a clever marketing campaign where their arrogance peeks through and today's entry falls squarely in that category.
Apparently the Wall Street Journal is refusing to run Sun's latest round of advertisements where they take a few shots at Dell. Take a look for yourself.
Sun Censored but Not Silent
Juvenile and silly (if not flat out contrived) but welcome to the world of High Tech Marketing at it's finest. Reminds me of a certain run of advertisements from Apple a few years back where the they toasted (literally) the Intel mascot by lighting him on fire to show how much faster their G3 chips were over the Intel Pentium II chips. It was lame then and didn't get any better with age. Either that or I'm just turning into a grumpy 'old' man.Top business publications refused to run our bold ad concepts because the headlines were thought too controversial. At Sun, we're the radical engineers that build "ass-whoopin" technology - we're not Miss Manners and we never want to be. We ask all you contrarians out there to e-mail us your own provocative ad headlines: my-headline@sun.com
- 7:30:57 PM
- Dvorak: Microsoft Should Confuse the Market More
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Back in January there were numerous news stories about how Microsoft Longhorn might be sold in as many as seven variations. The story died down, and I figured that the company wouldn't be so nutty as to confuse the market with so many variations on a theme. If they want to sell different kinds of tweaks, this can be better done as one grand distribution, with tweaks within the code that can be turned on and off during installation (or whenever).
So the story cropped up again last weekend, with people saying there could be as many as seven versions of Microsoft Vista. The gossip sites have the seven as Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Small Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate. If there are going to be this many, Microsoft may as well go all the way and add a slew more.
How about the Vista Kiddie Edition? This way the company can bring back its old code for Microsoft Bob. Net Nanny could be built in. This one would have the same power as Vista Professional and cost less. Good concept, no?
On the other end of the spectrum, they may as well bring out what I predict would become the most popular edition: Microsoft Vista—Porn Edition. Since the company would go through all that trouble to make the Kiddie Edition, it may as well take all it learned and make a Porn Edition. All the great porn sites would be pre-bookmarked. The screen savers and wallpaper would be all porn all the time. For users at work, there would be a built-in "boss" key capability that would switch the machine to a faux Enterprise edition.
Let's not overlook Microsoft Vista—Kitchen Edition. People are putting computers in the kitchen, aren't they? Well then there should be a rugged kitchen edition with a file system specifically suited to storing recipes and videos of Jacques Pepin cooking his way. In fact, this will be what was going to be the Vista Multimedia Edition.
Okay, from there we go to Microsoft Vista for Desperate Housewives. Perhaps you stop me here and say, "Hey, wait--that's a TV show. There would be a copyright problem." Not if it's a test–marketed, licensed product and sold specifically to fans of the show, not to mention actual desperate housewives. A one-two marketing punch, I tell you!
Read the rest of the article.
- 3:20:57 PM
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