Microsoft is taking on Apple's MacBook Air with a trio of new advertisements in which it doubles down on its contention that its Surface Pro 3 tablet is a better laptop than the MacBook Air, which is a real laptop.
Commentators immediately cited the Microsoft ads as a return to the days of Apple's "Get a Mac" campaign of 2006 to 2009. In the "Get a Mac" commercials, Apple needled Windows PCs, focusing on the then-current Vista operating system and its missteps by citing problems like spyware, malware and the detested User Account Control (UAC) feature, a security prompt that badgered users to confirm certain actions.
"Just to keep things interesting, we even have a back-to-the-future marketing campaign that just launched with Microsoft taking on Apple in a Surface Pro 3 vs. MacBook [Air] TV ad," said Bob O'Donnell, principal analyst at Technalysis Research, in a piece on Techpinions about the PC rebound. "Yes, it's 2014 and Microsoft and Apple are still fighting over the PC business ... kind of fun and kind of amazing."
By Wednesday, Microsoft's three 30-second ads, which debuted Monday, had collected more than 400,000 views each on YouTube.
Each closes with the tagline, "The tablet that can replace your laptop," which has been Microsoft's marketing message since the company launched the third-generation Surface Pro 3 in May, when Panos Panay, the executive who leads the Surface team, hammered on that theme.
The campaign's target, the 13-in. MacBook Air -- Apple's most popular laptop -- was chosen because, Panay implied, it was the benchmark against which all other laptops should be measured. "It is best-in-class when it comes to thinness and lightness. There is no debate," Panay said in May of the Air.
In one of the ads, dubbed "Head to Head," Microsoft compares and contrasts the two devices, highlighting the lack of a touchscreen on the MacBook Air, the pen included with the Surface Pro 3, and the latter's ability to separate from its keyboard.
Not surprisingly, Microsoft did not compare prices: The 13-in. MacBook Air Microsoft featured in the ad lists for $999, while the Surface Pro 3 and the separately-purchased keyboard cost $1,129, or 13% more.
Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, said he was initially puzzled by the ads. "Microsoft positioning Surface Pro against MacBook Air. Forgetaboutit. Buyers choose the platform first," Gottheil tweeted Monday.
His point was that people first select Windows or OS X, then start looking at device choices. There's little chance that meaningful numbers of Apple customers will suddenly decide they want a Surface Pro 3 or, on the flip side, that legions of Windows users will break ranks and buy a MacBook Air.
Asked why he didn't think the ads would be effective, Gottheil said, "Because [Microsoft's] marketing department makes big mistakes" and pointed to some groaners that the company has aired in the past. "Their advertising is incredibly erratic. They run some great ads, and then they run some that are actually repulsive."
As an example of the latter, Gottheil cited a 2009 ad for the then-new Internet Explorer 8 browser. In the ad, a woman borrows her husband's laptop, apparently sees some pornography he had viewed, and then begins an impressive bout of on-screen vomiting. The ad, dubbed "OMGIGP," for "Oh, My God, I'm Gonna Puke," was meant to tout IE8's new "InPrivate Browsing" function -- IE8's version of the private window feature, common to all browsers, that wags had long referred to as "porn mode."
Microsoft pulled the ad about three weeks after it debuted.
By Tuesday, Gottheil had changed his mind on the Surface ads.
"They got a lot of attention," was his explanation for the change of heart. "[The two are] apples and oranges, completely different devices, and the Surface Pro 3 is quite nice and something that someone considering Windows should look at, but not on their way to a MacBook Air."
Although Microsoft had long compared its Surface Pro tablet/notebook to Apple products, initially it stacked its device against the iPad. Somewhere along the way from the original Surface Pro to this year's third-generation revamp, Microsoft veered to another message, one that trumpeted the two-in-one not as a tablet that turned into a laptop, but as a laptop with some tablet characteristics. The difference is critical.
Gottheil surmised that Microsoft dropped the iPad references because of changes in the tablet market: Growth rates have slowed dramatically this year. Research firm IDC, for instance, now predicts that tablet shipments in 2014 will be only 12% higher than they were last year, a major fall-off from 2013's 52% year-over-year gain.
Still, Microsoft is sticking with a now-outdated message, said Gottheil.
"The idea that the tablet was a PC substitute has gone away in the market, in the press and on the part of vendors," Gottheil said. "That's driven sales for both Windows PCs and Macs. That has changed not just for Apple, for its Macs and iPad, but for the entire device market."
Microsoft has turned back the clock and given Apple some of its own medicine in new ads that pit the Surface Pro 3 against the MacBook Air.