Uh-Oh - Zune Marketing Sucks Again
Posted by: PatrickJ on Nov 03 2007
Above is a new ad for the new generation of Zunes. It features a girl who touches her new Zune 2 and then finds herself immersed in some sort of bizarre world of her own imagination (I think) - that features huge pink bunnies, a Kangaroo hopping through one scene, and lots more very odd stuff.
My first reaction to this one is ‘Huh?’ It feels like it might be better enjoyed if you were high as a kite. Even then you’d probably be fighting off a WTF feeling, but it might make you laugh I guess. The dumbest thing about it, for me, is that the Zune, the actual product, gets only a tiny, cameo appearance.
Sadly, the new Zune Journey promo site is not any better - it also features a sort of ’spacy’ theme (with cartoon stars with faces and whales swimming around), and is super-heavy on Flash effects and super-light on any useful information. It’s dumb and makes me want to close it out before seeing any real info about Zune at all.
Part of what makes Apple’s ads so consistently brilliant is that they are simple, and they always show off the product itself to excellent effect. The new Nano ‘Fatties’ don’t need any huge pink friggin’ bunnies - they sell themselves if you do the ads right.
Microsoft really needs to do a whole lot better with this. The Zune 2 line looks pretty good, and has even been getting a surprising amount of love on lots of mobile sites since it was announced - but I just can’t see this kind of marketing doing anything good for them.
What do you all think? Am I missing the boat here - are the ads creative and brilliant? Huge pink bunnies should be used much more in ads?
Via: Zune Thoughts
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OK, that just sucks. I mean, if it was a Peter Gabriel video, then maybe I could understand. But I totally agree. What makes the iPod/iPhone marketing great is that they show real people using their stuff.
I especialy think the fatty video with Feist is extremely clever. Simple and to the point.
With this, hell, you barely know what it is an ad for.
Doug
I coulda swore he was singing “get off of my stash” a couple times… Heavy drug use would explain A LOT about this commercial.
While the Zune may not suck as much (though it still sucks) its nice to see that Microsoft still has no frikin idea what is going on.
As far as I can tell, MSFT is trying to position zune as the “indie” or ecclectic media player. Which would make sense if a) it wasn’t made by the most mainstream software company in the universe and b) it had some actual concrete exclusivity claim on certain indie artists - which it doesn’t. I agree that it’s stupid that they don’t show the product much either, and when they do they ironically show the girl touching the screen. Hmmmm, what does that remind me of? Oh yeah! The iPod Touch!
Glad to see you still have no clue, MS. Keep up the good work. I don’t even care how good your media player is, because you give me no reason to go near one.
@ Joel
a) dead on
b) dead on
better yet … that whole comment was dead on.