[lunchbox]

Successful companies have learned that a (shockingly) large proportion of consumers form impressions and make decisions on a primarily emotional, rather than rational or practical, basis. That's what this video is designed for. It inaugurates the brand, piques the viewer's interest, and plants the seeds of desire.

Trust me, there will be plenty of time in the coming months for in-depth product reviews, spec comparisons, etc. ad nauseam.

[calinet6]

You can say all that, and you might be right.

But the entire site is crap. And I'll admit I'm saying that on a primarily emotional, rather than rational or practical, basis. The images are just straight links, the renderings are poor half-assed CAD drawings, and the colors make it seem like a play-dough ad.

I'm sorry, but this is not professional work. It looks like something I did in high school, in one weekend. As good as the product might be, the site is not good marketing, no matter how you spin it. It's shoddy and lazy. I'm honestly surprised at how poor it is.

[KeyBoardG]

Lets stay on topic here and not mudsling over your understanding of their development standards.

[jpadkins]

can you show us some examples of your work that put this site to shame?

[UnoriginalGuy]

That is an unfair question: one individual cannot be expected to produce sites which compete with an entire international company's output.

It would be a lot more reasonable to ask him to show competitors within a similar industry who have produced a better launch site.

[dpark]

It's entirely fair when it's in response to a claim like this: "It looks like something I did in high school, in one weekend."

Personally, I think the site is fine except that I'm getting some pixelation on some of the images (especially the main one, which is scaled to match the screen size). But then, I work for Microsoft.

[calinet6]

> I think the site is fine

Oh, I do too. The site is fine, you're right. But for a company with the amount of resources yours has, and for a product launch as important as this is, fine is not good enough. It needs to be exemplary. This isn't—it's just OK.

[wmeredith]

http://www.apple.com/ipad/

[numo16]

In other words, see the Verizon Droid ads that pushed android into being a major competitor to iOS..Android didn't do it all by themselves; Verizon put together commercials that evoked emotional responses that brought in the people who wanted the phone that was a robot.

[tmzt]

But how much did those adds sell android versus somebody walking into the Verizon store lookinga for a better phone. Can we separate the two as the occured nearly simultaneously?

[numo16]

People weren't really looking for a better phone at the time, though. Everyone knew you had to go to AT&T to get an iPhone, and if they didn't want to change carriers or shell out $$ for the iPhone, they were fine with the cheap feature phone. Cue the Droid advertising campaign, which let people know there was a smartphone on Verizon that did pretty much everything the iPhone did for a bit cheaper. That's pretty much how I saw it go down, but maybe I missed something and it was your average Verizon store rep that upsold it enough to make android a contender.

[jpadkins]

uhh people don't drop $200 for just a better phone when a replacement regular phone is $0-$50.

Do you really think android was far superior product to Palm Pre? Or maybe the advertising had a bit to do with it...

[podperson]

Really, you think that the video succeeds on that level?

I think there's about 10s worth of content there.

[dorian-graph]

Don't pretend you're the world.

[raganwald]

Ok, your argument is that this stuff works for the other 95% but it won’t appeal to us hackers. My question to you is, how does Apple make ads that appeal to the rest of the world and something like 75% of the hackers?

When the iPhone first came out, there was no nonsense about the brand and emotion without substance. They made EVERYONE want one.

Microsoft may have chosen not to appeal to us. But Apple has shown that you can do both.

[lunchbox]

> Ok, your argument is that this stuff works for the other 95% but it won’t appeal to us hackers. My question to you is, how does Apple make ads that appeal to the rest of the world and something like 75% of the hackers?

Asking that question is like asking an Olympic sprinter why he can't be as fast as Usain Bolt, or scolding a successful musician for not selling as many records as Lady Gaga.

Compared to Apple, pretty much every company sucks at marketing. So what? Apple is an extreme outlier in its PR success, owing to a number of unique factors other companies cannot realistically replicate.

How would you answer your own question? Do you think there's a simple solution Microsoft hasn't figured out?

[kooshball]

> When the iPhone first came out, there was no nonsense about the brand and emotion without substance. They made EVERYONE want one.

For the iPhone maybe, except for the non-subsidized price, but this was definitely not true for iPod and iPads.

The general consensus was the iPad was a giant iPhone and was going to fail among techies and the tech media.

[jussij]

> My question to you is, how does Apple make ads that appeal to the rest of the world and something like 75% of the hackers?

When it comes to successful marketing, companies like Apple literally manage to mess with your mind:

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/05/17/bbc-loving-apple-looks-like-a...

Here is the documentary about this topic. It is fascinating:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011fjbp

[dorian-graph]

I said you, not us hackers. Perhaps an appropriate follow-up is, don't pretend you're HN. :P Others have answered about Apple and I don't remember everyone wanting an iPhone when it came out.

Perhaps it's because I haven't received my crystal ball in the mail yet (Soon! /crosses fingers), but people seem to be making absolute judgments of a few hours. Microsoft can have other ads and other ways to promote it; it wasn't 'one ad or die'.

My reaction? Looks neat; let's see what unfolds.

[calinet6]

Nonsense. You don't need you be the world, you just need to understand it.

[podperson]

Back at you.

[baby]

That's called a teaser.