Eddielogic

– Thoughts on Strategy and Management

Mac vs. PC

When I read about this advertising campaign I remembered a specific strategic approach called “judo strategy”. This strategy was presented in the book “Judo Strategy: Turning Your Competitors’ Strength to Your Advantage”; the authors describe an approach how this kind of martial arts can also be used to help organizations battle seemingly bigger and stronger competitors. Well, to be a little bit more precisely: It is very hard to evaluate which of these two companies is the stronger one. However, this advertising approach can be described as a judo attack.

Using two new advertising clips from the “get a mac” show, Apple makes fun of a very expensive MS advertising campaign, which Microsoft has started for Windows. The cost of the MS campaign has been estimated for 350 million US dollar that had it start in Germany recently. Last weekend Apple started two new funny commercials that address this campaign for Vista in detail. (In the US the windows campaign for Vista was started with two commercials featuring Bill Gates and star comedian Seinfeld.)

The two new commercials:
 
 

 

 
 

On Youtube you can also find the entire “get a mac” show:

 

Since there a lots of comments for this campaign; I have to inform you (you might notice that this is some sort of disclaimer) that the Judo approach is the core. The IT matter is just the example. Furthermore: We use PCs to run our websites, to do accounting, to edit graphics ….

Comments are closed.