Apple has launched a clever new advertising campaign online and it occupied a larger-than-usual amount of real estate on the CNN.com homepage this week. I snapped a few screen shots (please excuse the headlines in the images below from CNN, but this was the current news at the time of the screen shots.):
The two ads, while physically separated on the screen, were designed to interact with each other as “PC” walks away from “Mac” from the right-hand ad to the top ad to destroy the customer satisfaction odometer:
As engaging as the ad was, I realize now that I didn’t even click on the ad — probably because I’m not in the market and already am a Mac owner (and thus fully aware of my satisfaction with the Macs I own).
After “PC” is finished breaking the odometer, the ads fade out and we see the Apple logo up top and the call-to-action on the right-hand side. Very interactive and one of the few ads I’ve actually wanted to toggle the audio ON for. Smart of Apple to default the audio to OFF as I’m usually scrambling for the pause or mute button when audio automatically starts playing when I visit a site.
An excellent way to leverage the interactive medium of banner advertising by utilizing characters originating from traditional television spots.
Tags:
apple,
banner advertising
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Apple just gets it. Today they announced the iPhone 3G, a thinner, faster, and more affordable iPhone. I continue to be fascinated by how they take difficult or time-consuming processes and make them easy. Take for example MobileMe.
How will Plaxo respond to MobileMe?
As a die-hard Plaxo user, MobileMe seems to be a fairly significant threat to Plaxo. In the wake of Comcast’s recent purchase of Plaxo, I would imagine Plaxo will be find itself in a difficult position to continue innovating as it works through the transition to Comcast ownership and business processes.
Apple has quite simply leap-frogged Plaxo in features and functionality that I currently pay $60/year for with Plaxo: Address book and calendar syncing. Plaxo also has other bells and whistles such as contact “networking” features (a la LinkedIn) and Plaxo Pulse (a la Friendster — essentially a “life stream” of your data)…neither of which I pay the yearly fee for. Calendar and contact syncing is where the value is for me.
MobileMe goes beyond address & calendar syncing
Most importantly, MobileMe will also sync email, photos, and files. As I hop between an enterprise BlackBerry, an iMac at home, and a MacBook Pro for work (running VMWare so I can play nicely in the Windows world), the MobileMe synchronization is really the best of everything. No matter which environment I’m in, I’ll have access to my most frequently-used data.
MobileMe could be the ticket
While I’m not about to switch email addresses, the photo and file syncing are very nice add-ons for the $99/year fee with 20GB of storage. Google’s Picasa photo hosting only provides 2GB of storage (it’s free, though) and DropBox (for file sharing) is still in its infancy. Is this enough to convince me to buy an iPhone? Only if it’ll work with Enterprise email. MobileMe however looks to be the ticket when it comes out (with or without an iPhone). I’ll be testing the 60-day trial for sure.
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apple,
consumer products
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In a recent post on Jeremiah’s Web Strategy Blog, he says that Apple must get into this space by accepting that mp3 playback will be a commodity. I guess I agree and disagree with this. mp3 playback on a computer is a commodity, but iTunes holds a huge share, and the iPod dominates the market for consumers’ mp3 playback device choice. I’m not sure that cell phones will be any different because there’s no clear market leader right now.
I’m in the market for a new cell phone, and although I love my BlackBerry, it doesn’t have video playback or mp3 playback…plus I don’t have cell service with my plan (it’s provided by the day-job…sorry, data plan only!). So, I carry a separate cell phone, my Nokia 8862. The qwerty keyboard was great when I first purchased it (I e-mail, text message, and IM a lot), but I never use it anymore due to having the blackberry. I really would like a cell phone and mp3 player combination. In looking at my options, there really aren’t any phones that dominate this category. Yes, there are many that can play music, but will they play my downloaded music from iTunes? No. Will they have the same familiar interface as the iPod? No. Will they have integration with my iTunes playlists? No.
For the millions of iTunes users, Apple’s iPhone could potentailly fill a void in the market…even if Japanese phones referenced in the article make their way over to the states. Without knowing what or when the iPhone will be announced, it’s hard to say much else about it…I can’t wait to check it out. Will it offer purchasing of music directly from iTunes? Will it have large storage capacity? Can I use it to replace my dated (gen1) iPod Shuffle? How will it sync with my computer…usb, firewire, or both? I hope I’m not disappointed.
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apple,
consumer products,
iphone
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Top marks for iTunes 7. Downloaded it yesterday and am playing with it for the first time this evening. The interface facelift is very nice. I really like the fluid display of album covers as you play different songs from your playlist.
I’m currently downloading “Gone in 60 Seconds” to test out the video capabilities. 1.3 GB to download. I really hope this is burnable to DVD. If so, that is huge. Not sure on the quality, but it will probably be “good enough” for now. The convenience factor is awesome and to be able to watch it anytime in the background on the computer will be very cool. Now I just need the new video ipod and the a new iTV that Apple is slated to roll out in early ‘07.
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apple,
consumer products
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