Surface Tension

More frequently than one could wish, the Microsoft Corporation has been putting on TV a spot advertising its new version of the Surface tablet computer, which is, of course, a competitor to the Apple MacBook, iPad and whatever else is out there.  I'd love to be able to tell you more about the Surface's great qualities, aroma, taste and whatever else I could, save for one little problem.

I can't tell from the ad.

There is a picture of the Surface along with a MacBook, and then a few facts about each start appearing as graphics.  Of course, by that time, they have started running some kind of electronic sound effects in the background, at which point, three seconds into the ad, I simply turn back to my 2048 game or whatever I can see that is in my native language (the sound effects are, hopefully, not) and wait for something comprehensible to reappear on the TV screen.

I could, I suppose, reasonably be interested in one of those tablet computers.   So I suppose you could categorize me as one of those who are Sufficiently Turned Off By The Ad To Lose Interest In The Product.  I'm not going to buy one anytime soon, but the ad has thoroughly convinced me to look elsewhere.  Since I apparently don't get why I have to listen to bizarre electronic sounds in order to find out that the Surface has more gigapixels than the MacBook has RAMs in it, I clearly am not the target audience, and assume the product wasn't designed for my needs.

Aside: for the purposes of this entry, I did actually try to find out what the electronic sound effects were, on the off-chance that those rascally 20-year-old scamps the product was designed for would recognize them and buy.  Sure enough, they weren't sound effects at all, but a "song" called "I Am the Best" by some group of apparently Korean sound-makers.  I would infer that the point of all that sound was that the target audience would know that already, and relate the Surface to being "the best."  Once again, I was detached from the target audience and assume myself to be not a candidate to buy the product in the eyes of Microsoft.

Surely I would not pretend to tell Madison Avenue how to advertise the products it is hired to promote and drive us to buy.  I certainly trust that the gazillions of Bill Gates's dollars that went into the ad were wisely spent, according to the laws of advertising and the collective wisdom of the ad biz community, and lots and lots of Surfaces will be purchased, really soon now.

But I won't be among those buying one of them.  I took the message of the ad to be that there is indeed a target buyer group for whom the product was designed, and I am not one of them.

I get that TV ads perpetually advertise things that a large percentage of the viewing community would never buy.  As a guy, I don't use or buy lipstick, for example, so I don't feel put upon when I see a lipstick commercial; I just take it as a matter of course that it is for a different segment of the viewing audience.

But I really am a potential customer of the Surface.  So when the commercial for a product I could have been persuaded to buy tells me that I'm not whom they're interested in -- and with those execrable sounds, they surely have -- you have to ask yourself if maybe Mr. Gates's gazillions could have been spent in a slightly more appealing way.

Copyright 2014 by Robert Sutton