Apple Ditches "Smug Mac Asshole" Ad Campaign

mykevermin

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Apple's "I'm a Mac" campaign is almost perfect: It's funny, memorable, and efficiently lays out the advantages of Macs over PCs. Its only defect: Virtually everyone who watches it comes away liking the "PC guy" while wanting to push the "Mac guy" under a bus.

Small wonder, then, that as Apple prepares a new batch of commercials, "Mac guy"—aka Justin Long, of Dodgeball and Herbie: Fully Loaded semi-fame—is nowhere to be found. A rep for Long confirms that his days as an Apple pitchman are over: "Every ad you see Justin in is for that previous time period only," she tells Radar. "There's no long-term deal with him." She adds (somewhat implausibly, perhaps), "Justin's a movie star, not a commercial guy."

Meanwhile, the campaign's other principals, director Phil Morrison and journo-humorist John Hodgman, are both returning for another round of spots, according to sources. Reps for Morrison and TBWA\Chiat\Day (Apple's ad agency) all declined to comment, and Hodgman's rep could only confirm that new ads were in the works.

Why was Long dropped, specifically? Perhaps for striking people as a "smug little twit," in the words of Seth Stevenson, ad critic for Slate. Long, he adds, is "just the sort of unshaven, hoodie-wearing, hands-in-pockets hipster we've always imagined when picturing a Mac enthusiast.... It's like Apple is parodying its own image while also cementing it." Of the polymathic Hodgman, who has drawn acclaim for his work on The Daily Show and NPR's This American Life as well as his book, The Areas of My Expertise, Stevenson writes, "Even as he plays the chump in these Apple spots, his humor and likability are evident."

Shouldn't a computer company have known that geeky is the new cool?

http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2006/11/apple-ditches-mac-guy-in-new-ads.php

Apple should have figured this out some time ago; the ad campaign is a good idea at its base, but the whole campaign reinforces the "Apple users are pretentious assholes; when they're not pretentious, they're smug as fuck" stereotype.

Not that I defy that stereotype, but I'm not getting paid to sell Macs.
 
Virtually everyone who watches it comes away liking the "PC guy" while wanting to push the "Mac guy" under a bus.
My thoughts exactly.
Those commercials annoyed me to no end. I'm soooo glad they're gone.
 
I liked the commercial where the Mac was bragging about it's magnetic power cord, as if PC owners constantly trip over their cords and wreck their rig.
 
[quote name='kaw']If Justin Long had talked with a lisp, then that would have fit the Mac stereotype.[/QUOTE]

You really have no idea what you're talking about, do you? Mac users are typically bald (by choice), wear emo glasses, and carry a manpurse with them. :lol:

Err... anyway, I always found the commercials somewhat funny mainly because of the guy who plays the PC. That said, I can't say that I'd even consider switching over to a Mac after watching the commercials... mainly because I know what I'm talking about with computer related stuff.
 
I love how everytime apple macs ANY commercial... its pretensious.

Let me say, that I've been in the graphic design/PC repair industry for 10 years, and never once have I met an Mac user ever talk down to me.

I mean, I dont understand why mac just doesnt take the kid gloves off and and be like....

I'm a PC.... I can do this, this and this... and I got all these ideas from watching a Mac do it 2 years ago!

Brought to you by APPLE : "You know, the ones who created Windows"

I primarily use PCs at work and home, but I have a Mac laptop. PC's are garbage. I never worry about defragging my HD, getting viruses, getting spyware, driver issues, lack of updates on my MAC.
 
For some reason this reminds me of Charles from Penny Arcade.

20010223h.jpg
 
[quote name='willardhaven']Macs are cool and all, but find me one for 200 bucks...

PCs are for the people.[/quote]

your computer cost 200 bucks?
 
[quote name='willardhaven']Yeah, I built it in '02... the monitor was an extra 150, but I screwed up and forgot to send the 90 dollar rebate.[/quote]

So it really cost you 490 bucks.
 
[quote name='ITDEFX']Bill Gates must be very happy now.[/QUOTE]
Whysat? He has majority non-controlling equity in Apple (49% of their stock, presumably he hasn't sold much of it). Gates smiles anytime you buy anything for your computer, Mac or not.
 
[quote name='Mookyjooky']I love how everytime apple macs ANY commercial... its pretensious.

Let me say, that I've been in the graphic design/PC repair industry for 10 years, and never once have I met an Mac user ever talk down to me.

I mean, I dont understand why mac just doesnt take the kid gloves off and and be like....

I'm a PC.... I can do this, this and this... and I got all these ideas from watching a Mac do it 2 years ago!

Brought to you by APPLE : "You know, the ones who created Windows"

I primarily use PCs at work and home, but I have a Mac laptop. PC's are garbage. I never worry about defragging my HD, getting viruses, getting spyware, driver issues, lack of updates on my MAC.[/QUOTE]

Funnily, it's just the opposite with me (in one isolated instance.) My teacher was a Mac die-hard (this was for record production by the way) and was one of the coolest people ever. I went to a studio where they used PC's and the guy was the biggest jerk ever.

I don't actually know any Mac users besides myself or people I've influenced to get Macs though, so my experiences don't count due to lack of experience.
 
[quote name='Mookyjooky']

Brought to you by APPLE : "You know, the ones who created Windows"
[/QUOTE]

Actually it was xerox believe it or not.
 
The problem for me with this campaign is that the message changes from one ad to the next.

In some ads, Apple acknowledges the strengths of both PCs and Macs and proposes that the two co-exist. In other ads, there's more of a dichotomy being drawn, with the out-of-the-box idea or viruses, that clearly implies Mac > PC. They need a unifying message between ads if they want the iMac campaign to work.

As it stands, the only thing I take away from each ad as a viewer is that the PC, while stodgy, is somehow more personable. I don't think these kinds of impressions were what Apple wanted to get across.

I hope they keep them up simply for the sake of more John Hodgman, but I don't think that they're selling consumers on iMacs in an appreciable way.
 
Misinformed = you :roll:


[quote name='Mookyjooky']

I mean, I dont understand why mac just doesnt take the kid gloves off and and be like....

I'm a PC.... I can do this, this and this... and I got all these ideas from watching a Mac do it 2 years ago!

Brought to you by APPLE : "You know, the ones who created Windows"

I primarily use PCs at work and home, but I have a Mac laptop. PC's are garbage. I never worry about defragging my HD, getting viruses, getting spyware, driver issues, lack of updates on my MAC.[/quote]
 
[quote name='jkam']Actually it was xerox believe it or not.[/quote]

Actually, a woman at Xerox created the worlds first graphical OS. She was fired for wasting Xerox's money, but then Xerox started a bidding war for the OS.

Now the OS was COMPLETELY barebones. It's like saying the person who created the Steam Powered Locomotive, created the Car. Sure the first car was modeled in the way of a personal steam engine that didnt need tracks... but it wasn't a train by any means. Same thing here, she gave the birth of the design, but she didnt create a windows based graphical OS. If you think that one person could create windows, you're not realizing the amount of work that would require. Apple needed 15-30 people working 40-80 hours a week for 6 weeks before the Mac OS was even near presentable.

Steve Jobs being a very innovative person, saw the potential in it, and was able to test the new graphical OS and assembled his team to start work on it immediatly. He split Apple into two sections, one to work on the new Macintosh, and the other half to keep working on Apple II.

Bill Gates befriended Steve, and Steve being an idiot trusted Bill and his 2 other businessmen. Steve gave Bill 3 working Macs with the graphical OS to Bill and his friends thinking that they would help design and usher in a new era of computer technology.

Bill instead, decided to flip everything backwards and port it to the Intel/IBM design. He then went around Jobs, and started bidding on the Xerox OS himself with an already completed OS.

Therefore.... Apple got the Xerox OS, CREATED what we know as the fully working Graphical OS... and then entrusted Bill Gates to be part of it. Bill then screwed Jobs over and ported a half-assed version.

So you could say that Xerox created Windows... but the windows Xerox created looked NOTHING like windows. They created a shell. It was Apple who actually cultured it, made it into a workable OS that did more than basically pointing to DOS commands and created it into what it is today.
 
[quote name='Mookyjooky']So it really cost you 490 bucks.[/quote]

200 + 150 = 350+Tax

It should have been 250+ tax since I forgot the rebate.
 
Like the ads or not, the one thing they did was have people talking about Apple. I find them funny, but I'm a smug asshole iBook owner.
 
[quote name='Chacrana']You really have no idea what you're talking about, do you? Mac users are typically bald (by choice), wear emo glasses, and carry a manpurse with them. :lol:[/quote]

No. I know exactly what I'm talking about. The stereotype I'm talking about has been associated with Mac users long before the terms "emo" and "manpurse" ever existed.
 
[quote name='VanillaGorilla']I liked the commercial where the Mac was bragging about it's magnetic power cord, as if PC owners constantly trip over their cords and wreck their rig.[/QUOTE]

Hey, all the small things add up. I know its obnoxiously stupid, but I find subtle things like that nice. Just like the release connectors for the XBOX controllers. To date the only machine that has fell on the ground has been my PS2 due to my damn Newfoundland. At that final base in MGS: 3 too, where the alarm is long as hell.
 
[quote name='VanillaGorilla']I liked the commercial where the Mac was bragging about it's magnetic power cord, as if PC owners constantly trip over their cords and wreck their rig.[/QUOTE]
I liked the one where the Mac does all the "fun stuff" where the PC only does spreadsheets and pie charts. This one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTu_gg4WxiE

And in response, I give you this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxPXFptzQRY

This was also a favorite of mine in the OS8/9 days, OS9 was god awful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vci_9yaOZe4


Its all just silliness... OSX is a great operating system, but it'll never have the base of software that Windows does because of its low adoption rate. It has a low adoption rate because its forever bound to Apple hardware.
 
I liked some commercials, like the spreadsheet ones, but others pissed me off for spewing misinformation. The one comparing iMovie and Windows Movie Maker...I've used both extensively (WMM at home, iMovie at school), and I have to say WMM works much better, and crashes MUCH less.

But I have to agree with apple on some fronts; the Mac is the slicker system, and is better for chic computer newbies, but PC's just offer more functionality because of the huge software base.
 
[quote name='Mookyjooky']So it really cost you 490 bucks.[/quote]

Aha! $490 is entirely different than $200. Not quite as large as the difference between the $2000 macbook pro (that isn't as powerful as my) and my $900 HP, but still, different indeed.
 
He didn't even add up my numbers correctly.

it was about 200 + cost of moniter (150)... which would have been 50 if I had sent in the rebate.
 
[quote name='willardhaven']He didn't even add up my numbers correctly.

it was about 200 + cost of moniter (150)... which would have been 50 if I had sent in the rebate.[/QUOTE]


He sucks at a lot of things, math is just one of them.
 
[quote name='willardhaven']He didn't even add up my numbers correctly.

it was about 200 + cost of moniter (150)... which would have been 50 if I had sent in the rebate.[/QUOTE]

Cheap or not is relative. One great thing about Mac user affinity is that many of the computers hold their value long after a comparable PC would be useless to sell because of its value. I sold an old Quicksilver (G4 tower) 24 months after I paid $1400 for it for $900. Now, perhaps I was just lucky, or perhaps it retained the same % of the value that the cheap PC you bought did.

I would argue, however, that for $250, you either have a lame-ass gaming rig, or you're an anomaly in what you paid. (Though, to be fair, any Mac is a lame-ass gaming rig, unless you have a Windows partition on it).
 
The best news about this is hopefully it will end the lame-ass Windows fanboy parodies that were never funny.

myke...Gates doesn't own that much Apple Stock. He invested 49 million at the turn of the century but it only amount to something like 1.5%
 
Up until now, the reason why I liked Windows based machines is because they cost less and were hell of a lot easier to upgrade. But now, the newer Apples are very competitively priced and look as if they're fairly easy to upgrade.

But Windows wins on the software side. Sure the software might not be as stable but at least there's tons of it so I have the options. And I think a lot of Apple's 'features' are just novelty ideas.
 
I don't give a shit about the history or anything, but my ThinkPad with Windows XP is the absolute best computer I have ever used in my entire life.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']I would argue, however, that for $250, you either have a lame-ass gaming rig, or you're an anomaly in what you paid. (Though, to be fair, any Mac is a lame-ass gaming rig, unless you have a Windows partition on it).[/quote]

I don't play PC games really, so I doubt I could run anything more than Counterstrike, Warcraft III or something similar.

My point was that Macs are not affordable for someone who isn't ready to drop serious money. I only use my pc for schoolwork, aim, music and photoshop (which actually runs well).

250 dollars for 4 years of solid use with no problems is not something you will get from apple.

My specs in case you were wondering:

AMD Athlon XP 1700
512 MB of SDRAM
40 GB Western Digital HD
128 MB Radeon Graphics Card
 
I have a beast of a 15" PB. It can run some games (WoW, Star/Warcrafts, and a handful of others). But my primary use for it is Video Editing (where Macs kill PCs).

That being said, I have a PC Desktop for most of my gaming needs.
 
[quote name='lordwow']I have a beast of a 15" PB. It can run some games (WoW, Star/Warcrafts, and a handful of others). But my primary use for it is Video Editing (where Macs kill PCs).

That being said, I have a PC Desktop for most of my gaming needs.[/quote]

People who prefer Apple PCs will often claim that the video editing is better. But my question is how? I really cannot see how considering that there is so much software available for the PC that there is no chance that that software does not match or exceed the software that is available on Apple PCs. I know that may sound like a bias statment but you have to admit that Windows has a lot more software for it and that there should be much more video editing software for Windows. And what are the chances that the software has not caught up with the Mac software, the Windows software could have easily copied the Mac softwares functionaility.

But if you are talking about hardware, as in rendering speeds or something to that effect then it does not matter. Hardware is the same and there are not many differences between the OSes. It all depends on what is running atthe time of the editing.
 
From the article:

UPDATE: Whether or not he strikes viewers as a smug twit, Long will appear in at least one more batch of ads before his deal with Apple runs out. According to his agent, David Guillod, Long is in the midst of shooting Mac's holiday campaign with Hodgman and Morrison. Shoots took place Monday and Tuesday, and more are planned for next week.
 
Apple already has the Smug Mac Asshole market cornered. They really should be trying to appeal to the "stodgy PC user" if they want to increase their Mac Mini-sized market share. Basically the whole campaign was condescending to the very market Apple was trying to convert.

Oops, did that come across as smug? Well I own both a Mac and a PC, so go figure. :)
 
This is most unfortunate. Those were my favorite commercials in 2006, based on the simplicity of the set-up and more importantly, the innate chemistry between the two performers. They felt very congruent with the humor that one would expect from The Daily Show, which Hodgman, of course, is a 'contributor' for. I suppose many of you might find Jon Stewart pretty "smug", too?

And maybe some of the disdain for these commercials comes from PC loyalists? I'm typing this from my Sony VAIO PC running Windows XP Media Center, and I didn't have a problem with the ads at all. If you'll excuse me, I'm just going to lie down and let my mourning the loss of an actual witty ad campaign depreciate.

P.S. I'll wager a lot of the disdain towards Justin Long has a LOT to do with many computer enthusiasts looking, dressing, and acting more like Hodgman's "PC" character than Long's "Mac". Just throwin' that out there.
 
[quote name='jollydwarf']This is most unfortunate. Those were my favorite commercials in 2006, based on the simplicity of the set-up and more importantly, the innate chemistry between the two performers. They felt very congruent with the humor that one would expect from The Daily Show, which Hodgman, of course, is a 'contributor' for. I suppose many of you might find Jon Stewart pretty "smug", too?

And maybe some of the disdain for these commercials comes from PC loyalists? I'm typing this from my Sony VAIO PC running Windows XP Media Center, and I didn't have a problem with the ads at all. If you'll excuse me, I'm just going to lie down and let my mourning the loss of an actual witty ad campaign depreciate.

P.S. I'll wager a lot of the disdain towards Justin Long has a LOT to do with many computer enthusiasts looking, dressing, and acting more like Hodgman's "PC" character than Long's "Mac". Just throwin' that out there.[/QUOTE]

That's what the article said.

The marketing campaign isn't gone (including Hodgman), but Justin Long is.
 
[quote name='jollydwarf'] The Daily Show, which Hodgman, of course, is a 'contributor' for. I suppose many of you might find Jon Stewart pretty "smug", too?
[/QUOTE]

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