Microsoft picks Flash Player for Vista campaign site
As reported by fellow evangelists Ben Forta and Ted Patrick, Microsoft picked the Adobe Flash Player for their new Vista campaign. First of all… I absolutely love the campaign! The idea was to invite a bunch of people to test a new version of the Windows operating system codenamed “Mojave”. Before they actually got to test the new OS, they were asked what they thought of Windows Vista. Obviously, they all said they didn’t like it for various reasons. After they tested the “new” OS, they were asked for their opinions. They all liked it, saying it was fast, looked great and was very handy. Then they were told they actually tested Windows Vista… and all their reactions were recorded.
A selection of all these videos are now the main feature of a new campaign site aimed to try and convince people to give Vista a try. One thing I really find strange, is that Microsoft continuously picks the Flash Player to deliver these highly visible campaign sites. These high-traffic sites would be a great vehicle to get Silverlight adoption up but obviously then the visitor would have to install the plug-in first to actually see the campaign. Then your best bet would be to pick a technology that everyone has… like Flash… And with 98.5% of all internet users running the Flash player, there really is no other alternative.
Go and check out the campaign site. It looks like they’ve even used Papervision 3D for this one. I really think it looks great.
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That’s a real problem isn’t it, people hating Vista just because it’s cool,
even though they haven’t got a clue…
If they could see Vista through the eyes of a developer or
true the eyes of REAL IT people, well then… maybe… just maybe they’d understand.
As for your remark concerning the choice of flash player:
I had to install Flash player more than once, manually even …
Wait till Silverlight 2 isn’t beta anymore….
But even then, why not wouldn’t they use Flash?
Microsoft has clearly stated Silverlight is not really
a replacement for Flash, they serve different purposes even though
sometimes they overlapp…
The way I see it:
Adobe and Apple for Designers: +100
Adobe and Apple for Developers: what are developers? are they dangerous?
Microsoft for Designers: We’re trying…
Microsoft for Developers: +100
And there was a “not” where there shouldn’t have been one, sorry
An extra irony here is that Windows XP can play that video out-of-the-box, but the newer Vista system requires a quick install before being able to view it.
jd/adobe
What really surprised me about this is that Microsoft bought aQuantive, and therefore Avenue A | razorfish?a huge interactive agency, and yet they still produce most of their interactive experiences in Flash. If Microsoft’s own agency won’t use Silverlight, what does that say about it?
@Bryan Bartow
Absolutely nothing, except maybe that Microsoft should have never released Silverlight 1.0!
Silverlight 2 is what’s it’s really all about and that’s still in beta,
so why use it for a real life campaign?
When I first heard about the concept, i loved it too. But now that I’ve seen the video … it all looks so “cheesy”.
This was pointed out in the comments on Ted’s blog. If you like the irony of using Flash, you’ll love the fact that if you look at the response header on this site, it says it’s being served by Apache running on CentOS
I think JD best describes this situation:
“..Whoa, Ted that seems harsh. Makes you sound worried and defensive.
The format of marketing material doesn’t seem like it should be so big an issue, such emotional words…”
Keyword being defensive.
Fact is it was outsourced to an agency whom chose to use Flash, Microsoft was just indifferent to the outcome and were more focused on the messages within the content and less about the how, welcome to marketing organisations whom aren’t technically savy.
This again is Adobe Evangelism at it’s most immature.
[[This anonymous comment was posted from a Microsoft IP.]]
I too think the campaign is brilliant. However, what the test subjects don’t realize is that their preconceptions were from people who probably used it longer than the subject’s involvement in the Mojave Experiment.
I can’t believe M$ is still trying to sell Vista as it’s viewed as the new modern day useless Windows ME.