Well, funny how things turn out isn’t it? On this weeks Geek Actually (ep 44) podcast I reported on a story about Microsoft COO Kevin Turner (although I couldn’t remember his name on the show) announcing proudly that Apple legal had called him and asked him to stop running the Laptop Hunter ads as they were false because Apple had lowered it’s prices. The general feeling on the show was that this story was bogus and Kevin Turners was making up stories.
After the live show I got an email from listener AtomicBetty, who sent me a link to a follow up story on this. How wrong I was. Kevin Turner was not making up stories, Apple legal did, in fact, call him and tell him that he needed to change the Laptop Hunter ads as they proved false. Where Mr. Turner got it wrong was his interpretation of that call.
According to UK’s The Register, “In Turner’s mind, that call was proof that the Laptop Hunter series was getting under Apple’s skin. “It was the greatest single phone call in the history that I’ve ever taken in business,” he said, “I did cartwheels down the hallway.””
However, he spoke too soon. Apparently, after consulting with Microsoft legal, the ad in question (you know, the one with the law student and her mom) has been removed from Microsoft’s site and YouTube. In the ad the camera shows the price tag of a 15-inch MacBook Pro as $1,999. Apple’s complaint was that the model shown had been discontinued and the new model was $1699 plus a new 13-inch model had been added to the line for $1,199. In the original ad the law student tells her mom, “This Mac is $2000, and that’s before adding anything.” Mom responds, “Why would you pay twice the price?”
Microsoft has changed the ad now and the price tag is not seen and the entire conversation has been replaced with a single line from the law student, “It seems like you’re paying a lot for the brand.”
According to a spokeswoman for Microsoft, “We slightly adjusted the ads to reflect the updated pricing of the Mac laptop shown in the TV advertisement. This does not change the focus of the campaign, which is to showcase the value and choice of the PC.”
I find the whole story hysterical. I have hated those Laptop Hunter ads since they started and for Microsoft to think that Apple would call because the ads were working and hurting their business was just moronic. I hope this is a lesson to Microsoft and Kevin Turner to find out facts before making such public asses of themselves.
You can read the full article by The Register by clicking here.
