Microsoft Office:Mac 2008 campaign
Ivan | Thu, 2008-02-14 16:38
I was so glad to get rid of the last Microsoft product a year or so ago from my machine. I would never dream of giving an MS product a second though ever again.
Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for Office, Outlook, Explorer and a couple of other applications to be there for us when there was nothing better to replace them, but they were the biggest resource hogs on my Mac. They were heavy in size and in their CPU and memory usage. They were relatively slow and unreliable too.
Now, we have iWork, Mail.app, Safari and a tons of lean, cool and fast apps to replace them. And, in this time and age, MS decided to release MS Office:Mac 2008. This is a bitch to sell.
And, here comes McCann San Francisco to the rescue with their campaign that talks to the Mac user and subconsciously promises a light, quick and user friendly package for your office needs. It's lighthearted, well written and short. Great use of white space and highlight colors. Congrats to the team. Click for bigger images!
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Good unpretentious style. I like the ads. Of course, DARING use of white space. :)
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Powerpoint is not a design application
My latest web design work
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Dirt and Rust
The clean look is nice, the illustrations funny – but what's with those icons? They're literally all over the place ... I don't see their meaning at all.
The icons are Microsoft's symbols for their programs...entourage, word, etc.
ttfn!
3dogmama
"Art -- the one achievement of Man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised." - James Thurber
I know – but how do they connect with the illustrations?
Your guess is as good as mine. My thought on the floating, airy icons? Keeping the look of Microsoft's 2008 line "light". It gets their symbols out there without weighing them down by having them in a standard position within the ads' layouts.
ttfn!
3dogmama
"Art -- the one achievement of Man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised." - James Thurber
They look like they've been sprinkled over the final layouts with a pepper mill. Probably as an afterthought by the marketing guys ...
"On the Same Page" and to a somewhat lesser extent "On the Ball" fail in rather obvious ways. "On the Same Page" says "Everyone on the same page"... except all of Microsoft's product icons aren't on the same page as the expressionless people. The complete lack of emotion on the faces makes the masses seem apathetic to Word, Powerpoint and Entourage which listlessly sit on the other side of the book disconnected from reality. At least Excel is trying to be on the same page; MSN is on the same page it's small and no one cares about it anyway.
Similarly, "On the Ball" shows one person on the ball demonstrating elastic collision. Microsoft's products float in the air and certainly do not seem to be "on the ball".
FAIL.
No more MS products for me. Tally Ho, Pages and Numbers!
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I'm not really impressed.
Maybe it's because I'm biased against Microsoft products in general (hate them).
Maybe it's because I'm not a fan of those sort of characateurs (sp?... sorry)
Maybe it's because, as always, I hate trying to read illegible text (and that handwriting is just illegible enough that I feel I have to spend way too much time looking at it to read it).
But there you go. It is bold use of white space, which I like, but I wish they'd used something different than the dull business-drone cartoons.
I really like the one where everyone is "On the same page" and all the Office products are on the other page. ;)
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Full disclosure: I have a strong bias against any Microsoft software. (I hear their mice are pretty good, but I don't use mice...)
The lead image, "Simplify" looks like the poor little guy is being dragged around by his work and the tools. He is definitely not in control of the situation.
"Taking it to the next level": the icons look like impediments to the progress rather than helpers.
"On the ball" looks like I'll be swinging back and forth for a while, but never actually getting any real work done, all while the software product will be getting in my way of even that.
"Delivering the goods" looks as if the stack of boxes is about to topple. And the icons will pull it down.
I usually have to really scrutinize ads to deal with conceptual faults, but these just leaped out at me instantly.
OTOH, I seriously applaud the use of white space and minimal text.
The advertisement is really well done - until you install the package and realize it just isn't that.
For years I've refused to let anything MS reside on my drive but gave in and installed this latest Office for Mac as we have a family pack. Glanced briefly at all of them and had Entourage for several days running but it just feels visually like a step back in time. And sync via .mac and across my home network which had been working flawlessly for months suddenly got messed up.
Didn't take long for me to uninstall the whole package again. And now I feel much better.
---marlyse
Yes, maybe I am not in their target...
Microsoft again has done a job.
But all the other forums I visit, at the chapter office... Microsoft sucks...
Why?
The list is long list behind...
When it is taking 30 minutes to setup a page for printing in landscape format which contains also a table with 5 rows and 5 columns, than there is a problem
, yeah, could be a user problem, but in a age of ergonomic things where we try to make it al more simple...
Microsoft has forgoten ... who they sell their products to ...
Is an option of course to instal the program, but after you pay 150-440 $.
I would expect a program simple to use, because is not a website which just looks nice and fancy, you visit once, is a tool and bad tools are not going to stay on the market...
Unless, you hire a big advertiser, and create a story and try to fool people.
But, once again is a personal option what you choose to work with but in a company where is a standard tool, I see many unhappy faces...
Have a nice day.
:)
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