Content Marketing Today

Out with Seinfeld and Gates and in with a real computer buyer.

There were lots of problems with the short-lived Bill Gates Jerry Seinfeld ad campaign.  In fact, we had a lot of fun trashing it last year.  Fundamentally, they did nothing to address the concerns of Microsoft customers or to solve their problems.  Basically, they featured two wealthy guys engaged in a meaningless dialogue that appeared to be complete self-indulgence on the part of Microsoft and its agency.  Fortunately, that ad campaign was put out of its misery quickly.

Their new campaign couldn't be more authentic or more effective.  The campaign is designed to counter the very effective Apple Mac versus PC commercials which positioned Microsoft as uncool and Apple as hip and happening. I think it works like gangbusters.

A Length of Wire, a Bunch of Sticky Notes, and a Red Marker Tell an Appealing and Amusing Story

Evernote is a cool web-based application that lets you save notes, web links, webpage clips, documents, images, and even iPhone  phone voice notes. Because the application is both versatile and unique, Evernote requires a bit of explaining.

Most of their explanation takes the form of short videos which illustrate the wide range of capabilities to which users can put Evernote.  In fact, they lead off with a video on the home page.

But, my favorite is a very brief video that uses stuff all of us would have at home to tell the Evernote story in just 44 seconds.