What feels like not long ago I found myself sitting on an airplane next to a lawyer at Microsoft. As I pulled out my iPad, a conversation ensued to which I naturally asked her about the upcoming Surface. Although she had not had a chance to have any first hand experience with it, she had seen the upcoming ads for the Surface and her level of excitement over them was infectious – I couldn’t wait… Skip ahead a few weeks and I was disappointed.
Microsoft decided rather than properly display a variety of features of the Surface in their ads, they would instead focus on people clicking on and off the keyboard while dancing. At the time I understood this was a neat feature, but with Bluetooth options available for the iPad, I felt like M$ missed the mark.
Lately we’ve been seeing Microsoft take a more aggressive approach to their marketing, straight up taking the look at feel of the classic Apple ads and comparing the Surface directly against the iPad. While there are other companies which have done these style ads before, Microsoft is using the beloved SIRI voice to explain to viewers the benefits the Surface has over the iPad.
While I’ve never had a chance to play with a Surface, I do think that Microsoft should have taken their latest marketing approach from the start if they wanted to have a better chance of biting into the iPad market share. These are clever, witty and (more importantly) CLEARLY illustrate features that the Surface has which the iPad does not… at least those aside from the ability to dance with your tablet.
