Windows 7 brand message: "Excessive, wasteful, messy, bloated"? Defibrillator not included?
The same burger company that brought you this lovely ad campaign in Singapore brings you this grotesque, incongruous campaign in Japan. Japan -- a country known for it's healthy food, modest portions, and the OECD's lowest obesity rates by far (but not apparently if fast food joints have anything to say about it). What is Microsoft trying to say? That Windows 7 is one big fat over-the-top mess? I saw Windows 7 live in July in Redmond; it looks good from what I saw. And a regular Whopper is not a bad burger once in a while. But ads like this is why people hate marketers. Many marketers are concerned only with getting short-term buzz -- if it gets people talking and the TV reporters coming, then whatever works is fine, right? I'm not against promotions, of course, but if your product is killer -- and you have already such high brand equity anyway -- why not let the product get the WOM for you as people discover how great the product is?
2010 calories. 1.7 lbs of meat.To build on the 7 theme, the first 30 customers of each day receive the Windows 7 Whopper for only ¥777 ( about $8.50 US). After that, it will be sold for double the price, ¥1,450 yen.
Here's a Japanese comedian at a press conference trying to eat the burger. Does this make you want to eat a Whopper or install a new OS? Is Microsoft supporting the idea of excessive consumption of beef? Much has been written about sustainability and the great inefficiency of beef production. (Researchers at the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science here in Japan have carried out a life-cycle analysis of beef production which shows that 'a kilogram of beef leads to the emission of greenhouse gases with a warming potential equivalent of 36.4 kg of CO2, about what a car produces every 250km.) Yet MS has a whole site dedicated to talking about their commitment to the environment and sustainability. http://www.microsoft.com/environment/
