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by bunderbunder 4589 days ago
There's a huge difference, though, which is that Apple pulled it off. The "I'm a PC" ads might have been barbed, but they were also funny, and managed to keep it upbeat. Whereas this "Scroogled" campaign just comes across as sullen and petulant.

Scalzi's Law: The failure mode of "clever" is "asshole".
1 comments
_delirium 4589 days ago
That I definitely agree with.

Another of Apple's very-negative ads, the famous "1984" anti-IBM ad, is a good example of that. Analogizing your competitor to a dystopian totalitarian regime risks coming across as shrill and over-the-top, but Apple managed to pull it off.

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bunderbunder 4589 days ago
That one's an interesting case, too, though. It didn't really come out and say any of that; it just let the viewer fill in the blanks. Case in point: In 1984 everyone interpreted it as obviously being about IBM. When it was re-issued in 2004, everyone interpreted it as obviously being about Microsoft.

Compare again with "Scroogled", which quite literally consists of little more than a pile of long-winded lecturing. Seriously, sitting through one of those ads transports me back to my sophomore history class. The one where the teacher had no shortage of. . . opinions.

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