Here are the latest ads of Windows 8.
2 of them – ‘Everything at once’ and ‘You and me together’- are on Indian Television. When I saw the ads on Indian television, these questions came up in my mind.
- Why is Microsoft advertising Windows 8 (to consumers) / Why would you want to advertise an OS upgrade?
- What are they trying to say in these ads?
- Is communicating, whatever they are communicating, so critical to influence a users choice?
The first questions came up because I presumed that a large chunk of Windows sales came thru OEMs. Now, Windows is practically the only OS that is installed on new PCs (Linux and other small distros as default OS are non existent on IBM PCs). So as long as the volumes of new desktops and laptops being made and sold are not falling and as long as Microsoft gets OEMs to install new OS on new PC’s, they really didn’t need to bother much. But, it looks like Global PC shipments are falling. This IHS report points to a drop of PC shipments in 2012 (to 348 million units)! The interesting trend is that the global PC market shrunk whenever there has been a financial meltdown. It happened in 2001 after the dot-com burst, then again in 2009 after the 2008 financial troubles. Its highly likely that PC sales in 2012-13 is going to be subdued. In the first report, the analyst asks a very pertinent question – ‘How much impact will Windows 8 really have toward boosting the PC market in the fourth quarter?’
The other option they have, to boost sales on Windows 8, is to get existing users to upgrade. But unlike Apple, where the OS is obsolete within a few years, Windows has extraordinarily long support times for its OS to support its core business users. 2 of the most widely used Windows OS – Windows XP support lasts till Q1 end 2014 and Windows 7 support till 2019 end. So business users, are unlikely to move to new OS anytime soon (The organization I used work for still uses Windows XP. Windows 7 was supposed to be rolled out mid last year. But there is no news of its roll out yet. Forget installing a new OS like Win8). This leaves the home / individual users as targets to influence. These guys will definitely need to be upgraded soon and fast for Windows to generate sufficient revenues on the new OS!
So, to get the new OS to succeed, they need to a) boost new PC sales and b) get older PC users (home users) to upgrade. Which I think is the point of these ads. Show stylish, ultra sleek, multi touch next gen desktops and flexible, detachable, flippable laptops for the former and harp on exciting new features for the later.
The former has been done slickly by a lot of hardware guys. Windows doesn’t really need to bother on this aspect, unless of course, if the hardware on showcase happens to be their new tablet – Surface. What they really needed to concentrate on was harp on the features of the OS that are missing in the older OSes.
Looking at these ads with this perspective, these ads are hard to get. Catchy yes. Easy to understand or remember no. I viewed the ads in a loop and made a note of what they were trying to say in them. All these ads were showing multiple features in the new OS – Video, Mail, XBox/Games , Bing-Search/Map, Office, Weather, Picture Unlock/Sign-in, Photos/Tagging/Skydrive, Skype/Chat, Paint, Calendar, Social/Share/Comment. Now, these features were shown so fast that it was difficult to understand what’s going on in the ad. I needed high repeats/frequency to get these and in most cases the sign-off was the only clue on what the creators of these ads were trying to tell. How on earth are regular end users going to understand the various features in the OS shown in the ad? And are these features, most of them dependent on constant internet connection, really critical to the average Indian user? No really.
The only thing that end users will understand from these ads is that there is a new OS which looks and functions differently. And hopefully, when they visit the stores, the friendly sales (wo)man will showcase these features and help them understand the advantages of these. Hope Microsofts’ communication strategy is on these lines. If that’s the case, in-store POS, showcasing the product accordingly and training of sales personnel should be critical and a continuation of the ads. Again, hope this is the case.
