Microsoft Ad Targets Apple's Artist Audience

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» 09 May 2009

Microsoft Ad Targets Apple's Artist Audience

Whatever Microsoft's intention was with its latest Laptop Hunter TV commercial, the ad still ended up as a hard sell—the foot-in-the-door-traveling-salesman-asking-the-nice-housewife-to-buy-his-Hoover-vacuum-cleaner-type of hard sell, to be exact.

To be clear, the ad doesn't smooth talk you into buying a PC or else you'll miss out on a chance of a lifetime (even though that's the implied threat), but it does go after the bread-and-butter demographic of the oh-so-youthful iGeneration: Artists.

It starts off like any other Apple commercial not featuring the infamous Mac versus PC duo. Sheila, who introduces herself as a filmmaker, wants a computer with a powerful processor and a big screen. She also wants one that can cut and edit video for less than $2,000. The price tag even hints at the twist in the end.

Looking at Sheila's face, one has to wonder if she's really the filmmaking type or the type you'd want to shoot film at. Then again, her gaze is such that you could almost imagine her to be one of those obsessive film editors who'd hiss and spit at the slightest hint of sunlight.

However, outside those vampire eyes, one would notice that she's a little too well-dressed to be an actual film editor. To achieve the look, she'd need to have that worn, devil-may-care appearance featuring miscellaneous stains all over her outfit, a fresh smell of nicotine mixed with coffee grounds, and fingernails more frayed than the edges of her grungy jeans. Then again, ads from both Microsoft and Apple haven't been too concerned with such authentic details.

Sheila, like most commercial models of her ilk, exudes the aura of a young Hollywood mom that's better suited to hawk products from Pepperidge Farms or Folgers than to promote affordable PCs for starving young artists. In any case, the spontaneous-sounding script cues her to dismiss buying a MacBook Pro. Or rather, considering her budget, that option should never have been mentioned in the first place; she'd be lucky to get 2GB out of $2,000.

After everything is said and done, she quickly opts for a Hewlett-Packard HDC 16t, which makes her a lot more tech-literate than the average commercial-model-posing-as-a-young-mom-posing-as-a-filmmaker. Then again, considering her choice, perhaps people still desire to indulge in such luxuries despite the current global economic slump that normally forces everyone to save their money.

After all, even artists are attempting to make happier films nowadays.