While I am cheering for Fallon to win the creative duties for Microsoft because they are the hometown team and have been doing good project work for the brand for some years now, it may be a poisoned chalice.
All the sweet advertising goodness in the whole world is not going to overcome the fact that Vista is crap…and everyone knows it. Testers, benchmarks and performance indicators all show that Vista is slower and performs worse than XP, the system it is supposed to replace.
People know this and are complaining. AdPulp has it on the front page today:
Thankfully I, like all hipster creative urbanites, am on a Mac.
Say that Fallon does beat Crispin to the Microsoft account, what’s next? How can you advertise for, how can you try to convince people to buy something that is simply not as good as the previous version? It’s impossible.
It’s especially impossible in this day of, as Tangerine Toad coined, The Real Digital Revolution where consumers can immediately find out if the product is not as good as advertised. And then they won’t buy it. No matter how creative, convincing, or whatever the ad campaign might be.
Losing this pitch will be a blessing in disguise.
The product is inferior and consumers will not want to buy it. When Vista does not sell well, the agency will get the blame because A) agencies are supposed to sell and B) it’s easier for a company to blame the agency and replace them than to admit that what they are trying to sell is complete crap.
Should Fallon win and then quickly be axed when sales, predictably, do not improve it will be the expected death-blow for the agency. Or at least another severe body blow. And how many of those can one agency take?
Of course, should they lose this pitch can Fallon even be considered relevant anymore? Or are they just a mid-level player with a glorious history on big brands that they can’t hope to win these days?
I wish them success, but caution that success in this case is hard to define.
A) Vista’s been out for a while, so it won’t be Fallon’s fault.
B) They’ll sell the idea of Microsoft, the concept of a company that can let you express yourself however you want, or some bullshit like that. MS has always been pushing an inferior product. They still rule the world. Unfortunately.
C) I don’t think this is a make or break pitch for Fallon. As far as relevancy goes, in this game, it’s always been “what have you done for me lately.” They’ll find something else, but I doubt they’ll drift off into obscurity.
The Pretty AE should date you for correctly using a word like “Chalice”
And for referencing me in your post.
@ mikelite: Thanks for the comment. Your points make a lot of sense, though I do have to disagree with you on at least your first two.
Yes, Vista has been out for a while but the brief for Fallon will surely be hinged on turning around the perception and sales gap that Vista has been experiencing relative to expectations. How will they do that with a product that is clearly inferior not only to what Mac has out, but to the previous product from the same company?
Also, though the Microsoft product may have spent much of its time as inferior to Mac in many respects, it was always the cheaper alternative for those that didn’t need the capability (and considerable cost) of a Mac. So Mac wasn’t the competition. The competition was itself…and it can’t even beat itself. What can advertising do when it is common knowledge that a company spent all this time and money on a product that isn’t as good as its last one?
I am inclined to agree with you on your last point in a general way, though for the morale of the shop and to shore up their position as an agency that top clients should consider, this is an EXTREMELY important pitch. If they can grab a big piece of business, and from the current hot shop to boot, it will be a big statement.
@ TT: I wish I could tell her that you said that…
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