What does this commercial tell me about the product?
[ul][li]It has to be assembled each time before it’s used.[/li][li]You can swap the keyboard with other Surface owners.[/li][li]You can choose your keyboard colour.[/li][li]It appears to do some things an iPad does.[/ul][/li]OK, I assume you don’t really have to assemble it before each use, and the keyboard can stay attached; but this is what I get out of the commercial. The commercial is all flash and no heat. It tells virtually nothing about the product, and offers no reason to buy one other than The Cool Kids are using them.
I think this is Microsoft trying very hard to tap into Apple’s advertising strategy - keep it light and lively, make the product desirable by peer pressure rather than technical specifications. Yes, it doesn’t tell you anything about it, but it does raise brand awareness without making it an old fogeys’ gadget, and it might inspire people to look it up, go play with it, and possibly buy it.
ETA: damn, I should have worked in an “Well, on the surface it may appear to be a pointless advert, but…” gag in there.
At least Apple gives some information. For example, the iPad Mini commercials show, without actually saying anything, that the iPad Mini is ‘just like’ an iPad only smaller by showing the side-by-side comparison and showing the Mini do what the full-size iPad is doing. (Though I still haven’t figured out what they’re doing in other commercials where they circle things and draw lines.)
FWIW, I don’t pay much attention to commercials. Only, the Surface one was remarkable for its lack of having anything at all informative.
If it’s anything like the windows commercials with circles and lines, they’re demonstrating picture passwords. Your screen shows you a picture and then you draw a shape you previously chose to unlock it. Apparently they’re the new big thing in gadget passwords.
Heh. As I said, I don’t pay much attention to commercials. I didn’t know if that one was Windows or Apple.
I absolutely did not pick up on anything from that commercial that you can do anything but draw circles and lines on a picture. I kept expecting them to make a composite picture out of the elements, and they didn’t. They might want to somehow explain that picture elements are now being used as passwords, for those of us who don’t even use text passwords to secure photos.
What I think when I see that commercial, with all the flimsly-looking plastic parts and the clicking and snapping, is: “That thing will break within a week.”
Maybe it’s sturdier than it looks, maybe not, but I don’t want to find out the hard way. It just looks like a cheap toy.
The first half shows a finger making lines and circles on a picture and then it opening to the apps screen about 4 times then it says PICTURE PASSWORD and then more arrows and lines. I was able to intuit what it was about without really paying attention but perhaps I am more plugged in, as it were.
My annoyance with the commercials is the one uses Best Coasts “The Only Place” which is an annoying song and I hate it. The other commercial uses Bright Whites which I like but I’m afraid hearing just the chorus everywhere will start to piss me off.
Is that what that commercial is demonstrating? I had no idea, even when I specifically paid attention to it. Whoever is in charge of the advertising ought to be fired. And the other one with the people doing the dancing with the Surface tablets and the covers is useless also, as I don’t get any idea of why this is a good tablet PC.
That’s the thing. For me, computers have always been tools first and entertainment devices a close second. The social explosion is barely important to me. I’m not one who ‘stays connected’. To do that, you need a larger social circle than I have. I barely use my mobile phone, and I don’t text at all. There’s no one I need to stay connected with so urgently that I need to text them, and I object to paying 15¢ per text or else having a higher phone bill to get ‘free’ texting.
I don’t see a need to protect much with passwords. While I can see that a picture password can be harder to crack than a text one, text passwords are good enough for me. (And I never saw the PICTURE PASSWORD part of the commercial. For me, commercials are for ignoring.)
I have absolutely zero desire to purchase a Microsoft Surface… but I admit that I find that advertisement utterly compelling, and just rewatched it right now.
Yeah, I think it’s the dumbest lock I’ve heard of. At least, if you choose a picture of a person whose mouth is open wide don’t have the secret code be a straight line out of their mouth! :smack:
I guess I could have been a microsoft focus group because opaque commercial message was really not one of the criticisms it raised in me.
I just saw a beer commercial that didn’t tell me anything about how the beer tastes, and just showed me good looking women dancing at a party where the beer was served. Same principle.