One More Thing

Posted on 10 Jul 2009 at 14:10

 

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With Microsoft and Apple's PR and marketing departments already living in fantasyland, perhaps it's time they went into the theme park business...

Microsoft, I've concluded, is missing a trick. Rather than focusing its energies on Windows 7 and Office 14, on fancy controllers for its Xbox 360, and on wooing the world into downloading Internet Explorer, I believe it should enter the theme park business.

Can you just imagine what Microsoftland would be like? Decked out in the finest blue paint that B&Q could sell (although only 80% of the walls would be painted at first, with a series of paint updates issued to cover the rest of the park over the subsequent years), the star attraction would no doubt be a roller coaster mirroring a graph of the firm's browser market share for the past 10 years. The climb is dramatic, and the drop increasingly so, too.

The height restrictions on the rides would require you to confirm - after proving you were in charge of yourself first, of course - that you were the correct height to travel. The ghost train? Glad you asked. There are few things more chilling than riding around in a car that, for added irony, crashes into a wall every now and then, complete with the added threat of European Commission and Department of Justice officials jumping out to say boo every now and then. Who needs ghosts when the scares are this real?

And what about the attractions! I'm confident Microsoft wouldn't miss a trick here. The coconut shy would be a hoot. Imagine chucking a ball at the carefully arranged and slightly transparent coconuts (gotta love those visual effects), only for the ball to hang in mid air for a second, turn into a spinning circle, and then resume its journey when you've turned away in frustration?

There would be downsides to Microsoftland, of course. Once you'd bought your ticket, you'd need to stop at a row of phone booths just inside the main entrance just to give downtown Bangalore a bell to make sure that you're okay to proceed. And if you changed your coat, or perhaps even dared to take off your jumper, you'd need to pop back and double-check that your ticket was still valid. Furthermore, you might need to download a Ticket Update half way round the park, or a Ticket Service Pack, to fix some of the rides that aren't working as they should.

The problem, of course, is that when the likes of Microsoft and Apple communicate with customers through advertising and PR, they must think we already live in such a fantasyland. I was staggered by the blissful na?vety of Microsoft's recent contention that it's cheaper to fill its Zune HD media player with music, for instance, than an iPod. Forsaking the fact that UK residents would need to factor in the price of a plane ticket, or at least overseas shipping, to get hold of one in the first place, this marvellous piece of post-modern marketing spin contended that to fill an iPod from the iTunes store would cost $30,000 more than filling a Zune.

Hmmm. It wouldn't, would it? Even Bill Gates has noted that you just rip your CDs anyway. You almost feel like, with a heavy heart, putting your hand on Microsoft's shoulder and showing it the stats for The Pirate Bay. It's a harsh world and there's little point sticking your fingers in your ears, repeatedly saying 'la la la', and then making statements that bear as much relation to reality as Robson & Jerome do to musical talent.

Incidentally, my favourite ever Microsoft marketing wheeze was when it decided, for the Windows Vista launch, to issue life-size cardboard cutouts of Bill Gates to put in computer stores. In cinema foyers, this sort of thing works: a big cutout of Matt Damon might indeed draw your attention to another Bourne movie playing. But a cardboard cutout of a bespectacled man wearing his favourite cardigan?