Koo’s Corner

In the spirIt that something is better then nothing, here is my blog for today. Wrapping up a bucknuts article as we speak. I tried to get my roommate to participate in performing the song below with me. Wasn’t having any of it.

Enjoy…If only the corporate world were this easy.

Think back to your elementary school or even junior high days to when there was that one kid you just couldn’t stand. Every day it was a struggle not to pummel him. Every opportunity that arose to beat him in something…..anything was a worthwhile opportunity.

That’s how I feel about former Michigan running back Mike Hart (now with the Colts….kind of). Hart exploded onto the scene as a freshmen and was a 7 point favorite to beat Ohio State in 2004. He was brash and audacious with the media but received somewhat of a pass for his stellar play and notorious work ethic. To me he was just as jackass lacking class.

Hart lost to the Buckeyes in 2004, again in 2005, and followed it up with another loss in 2006. After every loss to the Buckeyes or any high profile loss in general, he seemed to get more and more abrasive . Although some viewed him as a first or second round pick in the NFL draft he came back to play his senior season. He can explain why in the video below.

So how did Hart do in his senior season? Some highlights include losing to Appalachian state in the opener, getting blown out by Oregon, and ruffling some feathers at an away game in Illinois where he unexplicably taunted the crowd. He also lost to Ohio State yet again.

But what will stick to Hart the most were the comments he made last year after Michigan’s win against rival Michigan State. Coming back from being down 10 points in the 4th quarter, Hart rubbed salt in the wounds of the Spartans by making the jackass comments below.

The lack of respect and sportsmanship did not sit well with Michigan State’s Head Coach Mark Dantonio who subsequently gave one of the most stirring yet stable post game interviews in recent years.

So fast forward a year later to when last week Michigan State goes into Ann Arbor and pulls out a very well earned 35-21 win. Hart’s gone, but Dantonio has his revenge. Although the Spartans kept it pretty classy taking the higher road on this one, the Spartan fan base decided it to stick to their in state rival via some digital billboards.

So who put up the billboards? A website called Michiganisourlittlesister.com.

This isn’t the first time billboards have been involved in a college rivalry, but this is probably as hostile its ever been. The nutshell message…Karma’s a bitch.

As for Hart who started this whole thing with his lack of respect, he is out for the season after suffering a leg injury. Karma 2…Michigan 0.  Hart’s still yapping but now through his own blog at Jocklife, a site with B level NFL talent and D level interviews.

Its a rough economic climate right now and even a harsher time to raise money as a start up. That’s why I was pleased to see too somewhat similar companies to Yardbarker bringing in some rounds of funding today.

Bleacher Report (good friend Rory Brown just started work there) brought in a nice round of $3.5 million in a second round of funding led by Hillsven Capital amongt others. It was unknown how big Bleacher Report’s first round was, but Crunch Base lists their total funding now at $5 million.

In a nutshell Bleacher Report is a really well designed and functional website that allows users to participate in what they call “fan journalism”. If I had to compare it to something, I would maybe call it a more open FanHouse, but one that doesn’t recruit or pay writers. The writers are typically from what I gather people who love sports and writing, but do not want to start their own blog.

Their advertising is sold by Federated and they have content syndication deals with CBS and Fox Sports. Although online advertising is an industry with a volatile outlook, the CEO points out “as traditional news organizations cut back, there will be more room for fan journalism to step in and fill the gap.”

Also making waves was SB Nation, another Bay Area web 2.0 spots media company. SB Nation raised a round believed to be between 3-7 million dollars. The opportunity to invest in SB Nation brought an interesting group of investors to the table.

“Accel Partners, the Silicon Valley private equity firm best known for its backing of Facebook and led in part by Boston Celtics minority owner Jim Breyer. Additional funding came from Allen & Co.; AOL vice chairman emeritus and Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis; Brent Jones, former San Francisco 49ers player and now managing director of private equity firm Northgate Capital; former Yahoo! senior executives Dan Rosensweig and Jeff Weiner; and several executives from Providence Equity Partners, the venture capital shop where Bankoff remains a senior adviser.”

SB Nation is similar to us except that they own the blogs in their nation and are not as focused on community building via a central hub page. Bloggers are given a split of advertising revenue for becoming writer’s and am sometimes compensated for selling thier former blog to SB Nation to help funnel traffic to SB nation owned sites.

SB nation’s content is now syndicated on Brash.com and they also have their ad inventory sold by Federated.

Overall both moves are positive as 2 growing start ups bagged sizable rounds that will allow both companies to focus on growth and profitability.

Yardbarker also had a good day as Vernon Davis blogged about getting kicked off the field by new head coach Mike Singlatery. It was just as week ago when Vernon talked about his enthusiasm for having Singlatary as the new head coach.

Davis’ blog posts are a great example of why its beneficial to have a blog as a pro athlete. Vernon did something stupid and suffered some team, coach, and public backlash because of it. He wakes up the next day, blogs articulately explaining his situation and sentiment. The mainstream media picks it up and moves on. No interviews needed and no headache for the PR Director who I know.

Unfortunately though ESPN talked about this on NFL Live and read almost his entire blog without mentioning its a Yardbarker blog. Sometimes they do accredit us, but other times they have not and its kind of a mystery why they duck where this content comes from.

Today apparently they were extra coy.

From someone who is lucky enough to watch NFL Live during the day

“ESPN just did everything possible to avoid mentioning yardbarker while using the vd quotes……they said “from the espn morning roundup of athlete blogs”

Awww….the good old “ESPN Morning Roundup of Athlete blogs”…..

Where would one find this feature that you have discretely made up instead of doing the ethical thing and mentioning the content source?

Trying to make it sound like an interns daily responsibility of going to yardbarker.com and other athlete blogs is a daily feature that exists on your website is pretty bush league IMO.

Another great weekend in the books. Below are 10 takeaways from week 9 as well as some other bits of knowledge picked up this weekend.

1- Those who say there is nothing sweeter then revenge don’t know what they are talking about. Michigan State pulled away from Michigan late to spank the Wolverines 35-21. Michigan falls to 2-6 on the season, so Rich Rodriguez felt the pressure to finally sign his lucrative contract as the Wolverines crash and burn to a bowless and embarrassing year.

Last year in another hotly tested contested game, Michigan players made some very disparaging comments about Michigan State. Below is Michigan State’s coach getting all hot and bothered about those comments. He must of enjoyed Saturday’s revenge win. Put me down as saying, that if Jim Tressel was to ever go anywhere, that I would have Dantonio on the top of my list as a replacement. The guy hates Michigan and has Buckeye roots…nuff said.

2- The way the ACC and the Big East are playing, its plausible that one conference or even both could finish the year with no teams ranked. Currently the Big East has USF ranked at 23 with Uconn, West Virginia, Pitt and Louisville lurking. Most of those “top” tier Big East teams still have to play each other. Those games and a bad bowl season could cripple the conference’s national perception.

For the ACC, FSU seems to be the only team immune to losing in the Top 25 as Georgia Tech follow Virginia Tech, Wake Forrest on their way out of the top 25. I think its still a long-shot this conference has no top 25 teams at the end of the year but with FSU taking on Florida and a tough docket for Maryland and Georgia Tech coming up, this could be another pretty tough year for the conference.

The fact that Miami vs. FSU has sunken to where it is now coupled with the fact that Virginia Tech seems to be slipping into medicocrity has set the tone for the short term outlook of the ACC.

3- Penn State is legit. OSU played them for 50 minutes dead even, but in the end the team who made less mistakes came away with the victory. OSU has a bright future with 2 great back to back recruiting classes but you got to feel that James Lauirinitis, Malcolm Jenkins, and Marcus Freeman and other Seniors are pretty bummed they couldn’t leave OSU with a national championship considering the team has been in the top 10 pretty much their entire careers.

OSU being a true contender in 09 really boils down to if Chris Wells will stay in 2009. Without him, I see the Bucks being a top 10 team but not a top 5 team.

4-  Oklahoma State put up more of a fight then I thought they would against Texas. Got my first extensive look at the Cowboys Kendall Hunter who looked pretty darn good to me. Undersized for sure, but in the right NFL system he could be a beast.

I am thoroughly enjoying the high scoring showdowns of the Big 12 South between the Big 4 of Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma State, and Oklahoma. Told you that Big 12 was going to be awesome this year.

5- With Missouri rounding back into form, I wouldn’t put it past them to throw the BCS a huge curveball by knocking off the Big 12 south winner in the conference championship game. The game will be in their back yard too.

Also don’t think that the party is over with the Big 12 after this year. Zach Robinson, Colt McCoy, Sam Bradford, and Todd Reesing all return next year. I also think June Jones is really grooming Robert Griffin (freshmen qb 9td’s no picks) to be next great one in the Big 12.

Is there any doubt this conference is just going to roll over teams come bowl season?

6- How about Tim Brewster for coach of the year? The Gophers are ranked at 7-1 and may find themselves in the top 15 going into bowl season. Quite the turnaround for a team that was 1-11 last year including losses to Bowling Green, Florida Atlantic, and North Dakota State. Quite an impressive turnaround.

7- Speaking of the Big 10, the conference is really in somewhat in a era of disarray. Have Michigan and Wisconsin ever been this bad? Joe Tiller is gone next year and IMO I think you’ll see Joe Paterno move on next year. The fact he wasn’t even in the locker room at halftime really symbolizes how far along the assistant coaches have come at that program.

Nobody really knows what Zook has going at Illinois and who knows how look Farentz can tread water at Iowa.

With that in mind, you seem to have the Dantonio era taking root in East Lansing, Brewster building up respectability in Minnesota, and some progress being made at Northwestern.

With a lot of national media attention on program consistency, it may be awhile before the Big Ten really settles into a state of balance.

8- Sheesh things are really ugly in Washington. The Sonics have left, the Mariners are one of the worst run teams in baseball, the Seahawks are imploding and do not have an optimistic future with the current talent in place, and then there are their 2 college teams.

The Huskies are 0-7 this year and seem to be getting worse as the year goes on. I got even money if Tyrone even makes it to the end of the year.

On the other side of the state Washington State is 1-7, but that win was not against a D1 team. The Cougars have given 63+ points an amazing 4 times. The most amazing stat would be in their 7 losses their closest game was a 28-3 loss to UCLA. …. I feel like my JV team could have a chance against these guys.

9-  Two games under the radar that intrigue me are Cal vs. Oregon and Notre Dame vs. Pitt. Both games are somewhat default Top 25 play in games. All 4 of these programs are somewhat in transitional modes so it will be interesting to see if any of these teams can make a loud statement of things to come.

10-  Finally a look at the BCS picture.

IMO only 9 teams have a legitimate shot at the BCS. You can pretty much now write Alabama in pen in the SEC Championship game agaisnt the winner of Georgia va Florida. We’ll see this list cut down next week to at least 8 with either Georgia or Florida losing. Texas is now 1/2 way their gauntlet of a schedule.

Texas Tech is now the only other undefeated Big 12 team (besides Texas) but has their work cut out as Texas, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State now loom on the schedule. They have to win two out of three of those games including a win against Texas to really have any shot. A Texas win next week pretty much makes Oklahoma State and Texas Tech last year’s Kansas. One of those teams may finish with one loss (not if the Sooners have anything to say about it), but they just don’t have the pedigree and traction with voters to leapfrog any other 1 loss teams.

Penn State at this point although number 3 in the country, probably is the most likely to make it to the title game. Shananaginz seem likely to occur for either Texas or Bama or maybe even both.

The Sooners to me are just a roadblock and buffer to keep out USC of the title game who really doesn’t belong to be there. The Sooners if they win out are more deserving.

Man if there was a playoff system with the teams above….. I would just be totally enthralled.

Other weekend notes

- Johnny Drama is a cock block. Poor Turtle.

- Mila Kunis is a babe (never knew she was the voice of Meg on Family guy). Her stock is way up after watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Mila Koo would not a great name too.

Below is my gift to you. Kind of lame but funny.

Getting my blog off of Wordpress.com was a lot harder then I imagined. I still have some clean up work to do, but roomate, “Hot Johnny” has helped out doing a lot of tedious work for me. I also challenged him to try blogging. He procastinated but then I told him I would pour a bucket of water on him if he didn’t do it, because his room doesn’t have a lock on it.

Below is what he came up with and its pretty interesting and not bad for a first blog. I am adding some pictures as well as some comments that will be in bold.

Without a further ado. Its Hot Johnny time.

Not enthused at the prospect of blogging

So yeah, I just moved from Springfield, Ohio to San Francisco, California.

With guidance from Koo, I sprayed my resume at a Wikipedia list of tech companies in California.  Out of the thirty or so submissions I sent out I had one bite which was Yelp.com.  After some phone interviews, emails, and reading the book “Once Your Lucky Twice Your Good” by Sarah Lacy I was facing a series of interviews with an internet company in an office in downtown San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood.  The company and people were really open and friendly and I really knew at that point I was down to make the 2,500 mile move out here.  Yelp offered me a job as an account executive.  I accepted right away and headed back to Ohio to pack.  Leaving family and friends was tough, but I knew a land of awesome lay in front of me.

Skinner blogging. Swear to god nothing was staged in this picture. This isn’t the fun photo game at the bar where you pick 10 things wrong. This is the items Skinner has around him when he gets his blog on

By September 1 I had packed every last possesion I could fit in my car, squeezed the doors shut, and started my drive out west.  Driving from Ohio to California was one of the most challenging, beautiful, and centering experiences I have ever been through.  To anyone who hasn’t driven cross country, I highly reccommend.  The natural beauty of the Western part of the US is totally unparalleld.  The most notable part of the drive was staying in the Hotel Nevada.

This place is a seady ass, 20s era casino/hotel in Ely, Nevada off highway 50 “The Lonliest Road in the US.”  After a 12 hour day of driving through the f*&king desert, I pulled up to this place park and walk up to see probably 70 motorcycles, bikers, biker chicks, prosties, God knows who else outside.  Walk in to the most old school casino that’s probably still in existence.  Bikers everywhere playing slots.  Picture the most uncomfortable Skinner and there you are.  But the room actually turned out to be really quiet and nice.  Except for the constant shower temperature fluctuations which were apologized for in several decoratively witty signs.  Finally I arrived out in San Bruno, CA and moved in with Ben Koo.

Initially I was totally freaked out.  Work didn’t start for a couple of weeks and I wasn’t sure if I made the right decision.  I was having a great time out here but really missed home.  In mid-September I started working at Yelp.  From the word go on the first day I knew I loved this company.

My training class of about thirty people was hired to sell marketing promotions to small businesses. Everyone is extremely friendly and cool.  But the icing on the cake, the absolute pinnacle of when I realized I was down to stay at this company for the long haul….kegerators.  Once I saw kegerators on each floor of our 3 floor office stocked with Sierra Nevada I knew this was the type of place I could get used to.  Ping pong table in the middle of the office…yeah that was cool too.  But I wasn’t excited just to see party equipment (in fact I’m way to busy to drink or play ping pong during the day).  I was more excited that these things represented a laid back cool atmosphere that really appealed to me.

Work is really fun.  I wear a head set and make about 100 calls a day to small biz owners in Northern California and Chicago.  Talking to that many people a day is just ridiculous in some ways.  I have the funniest conversations with Enlish as second language (ESL) people.  ie taquarias, thai food, chinese cuisine etc.  ESL business owners are just bat shit crazy in a lot of cases.  I guess you would have to be run a business in a country where you can’t speak the language.  Anyway I make an ass load of calls and so far 4/1500 have resulted in sales.  Surprisingly, based on that figure, a respectable number.

I told myself I wouldn’t become a yuppie when I came out here (I told him he would), but lately I have been subscribing to a few yuppier activities.  I started to drink wine out here, which wasn’t really up my alley before.  It’s kind of hard not to.  Californians are spoiled on a lot of areas: weather, produce, beaches.  And wine is just really good out here.  I make no apologies anymore for my enjoyment of wine. I also predicted Skinner would become a Mac guy. He retorted saying “he was a PC guy” beaming with pride… not anymore

I work at a really posh company with trendy people and I have gone to trendy night spots in downtown SF.  One notable excursion was to Circa, a bar in the marina district.  At first I thought, wow this looks like pretentious yuppie spot with pop rap blaring.  Actually the mix was hip hop, but turned out to be really good.  I was able to easily acquire a spot at the bar where I posted, drank draft Fat tire at a reasonable price, and watched the hottest bartenders grind each other while serving drinks really efficiently.  Overall awesome experience.

Another yuppie tendency I have recently taken up is ordering my groceries online through safeway.com.  Basically you can pick out anything you want from an online grocery catalog and have it delivered the next day for cheap or free cost in some cases.  Really cool super stoned delivery drivers too.  One of which I have developed good rapport with from Koo ordering 250 bottles of lemon propel featured in an earlier post. (Christ that’s a lot of propel).

I made skinner give me the computer real quick…little does he know screenshots of what he got. He honestly took about an hour to buy all this.

So this is kind of the beginning of the story of my move out here.  Lot’s of good stuff yet to come.

Not too bad…. Skinner is the man. He is known to mix it up every once in awhile…. This was kind of random and weird but I didn’t ask questions. Any guesses?

I consider myself a pretty solid good story teller, and with a big grin on my face I am geared to tell you one that blends some of my favorite things in life (technology, web 2.0, ladies, people with good senses of humor, and the awkwardness of being the world’s greatest Chinese Jew).

As I have mentioned before, Yardbarker moved to a great new office in the SOMA district of San Francisco. We’re on the 6th floor of 7 floor building and I have yet to acquaint myself with the neighboring tenants.

However of late I have been realizing that every time someone from the 7th floor is in the elevator is going down and stops on our floor, they are typically an attractive female around my age. Usually I am little zonked out at work so I never really put any thought into who are neighbors to the North were although obviously I endorsed the new digs, the new area, and our new neighbors.

So coming back from a late lunch and trip to the bank, I saw someone scrambling a bit to try to make the elevator. I want to iterate that I am a hold the elevator kind of guy, and do not discriminate on who I hold the elevator for (unless they would be wearing attire of a sports team I hate) . But in this case, I once again found myself sharing an elevator ride with yet another seemingly very nice, well spoken, and yes attractive person from the 7th floor.

The elevator was slow enough where this time I actually learned that the company above us is LaunchSquad, a PR firm that has an extensive client list mainly in technology.

It was then I had “that AHA moment”. Since graduating college, I have continuously been impressed by the people I meet from PR. Some of my closest female friends from high school and college have gone into this industry and they are some of my friends I respect the most. They  definitely turn a few heads too.

In addition over the years, I have found myself meeting various PR contacts whether it be ourinternal PR agency or contacts met at events like trade shows, think tanks, and networking engagements. Time and time again, I came away somewhat blown away that almost all of these new contacts were female, young, very well spoken and energetic, and quite frankly usually very pretty. To be honest I don’t know if I have ever met a male PR contact. Research shows that indeed the growing industry is now anywhere from 65-75% female.

Below are 3 stories documenting my infatuation/ongoing education of the PR industry.

- Recently at a conference I had to tell a new contact who wanted my card, that I had given out almost all of mine to PR contacts At the time I was just trying to avoid giving out another card, but it was true that I had indeed had a higher ratio to giving out cards to people in PR then any other function.

-Another time I had a kickoff meeting with a new PR firm. I attended the meeting with 4 people from my team and we all sat one side of a standard conference table. We were ages 25-33 and ALL male. On the other side of the table were 5 lovely ladies setup almost like Russian dolls mirroring our ages and looks. It was ridiculous.

- Later that year, at a conference, our PR firm wanted me to introduce them to as many customers as possible during socializing times. It wasn’t a hard sell as we were at a technology convention for programmers and engineers (95% male). I kept approaching strategic customers with the line, “how would you like to meet the prettiest women at this conference?”

Time and time again it worked like a charm, and our PR firm was flattered by my methodology (props to them).

Getting back on track, today after realizing that upstairs was most likely an hub of PR babeage, I posted this ridiculous Tweet on Twitter. My apologies if you don’t know what Twitter is. Someday my friend….someday.

Now if the above Tweet comes off in bad taste, I would to like that Tweets are limited to 140 characters and I couldn’t really elaborate. From all I have learned dealing with women in PR is that they are pretty much all great catches in ALL regards, not just looks. They’re successful, energetic, passionate, great conversationalists (big points there), and yes….they are somehow someway typically all attractive.I honestly have to say that PR is the only industry which I consider somewhat of a filter for finding a potential girlfriend. Teachers and sideline reporters are next on that list.

After a couple of meetings I then logged into my Gmail…..to see that I suddenly had about 20 new people following me on Twitter. All the names were female, and before today I had only a dozen or so people following me on twitter so this was somewhat startling.

At first I thought maybe they were Spam accounts, but as I looked at the accounts they were all…….. young, women, and yes….attractive.. WTF?

I knew it was somehow tied to my Twitter message, and quickly deducted that yes seemingly the whole floor above had zoned in on my previous message. How? I have no idea as I am not really tied to them at all. Obviously someone found it and called an all hands meeting where I was most likely auctioned off to the higest bidder. More likely they just got a good laugh out of my brash compliment.

About 1/2 an hour later my B movie aficionado partner in crime, Mike, let me know his buddy working upstairs (most likely a dream job from what I deduct) had said that I was quite the talk up there.

So yes, now I am following 20+ ladies on the floor above me and vice versa. Because of this I can see that they have had a pleasant afternoon entertained at the idea that I put PR professionals on a very high pedestal. Glad to know they took it in good humor and probably added a level of entertainment and flattery to their day.

As I left the office I asked good friend FTR, the % chance that I would awkwardly have to share an elevator ride with one of the great ladies at LaunchSquad. He guessed 10% which I agreed with but knew that miraculously it was going to happen without a doubt.

Elevators open and yes on script two of LaunchSquadders are there with big grins on their face. I introduced myself, shared a laugh, and tried to figure out just how all of this got started. I have no idea, and I might never know. The point of the story is that Twitter no longer sucks and PR professionals or LaundSquad employees in general typically also possess a good sense of humor and elite Twitter proficiency skills.

They also make great bloggers and finally answered my question on why PR has become such female dominated industry.

Don’t worry this is not a political post. I do however wish I could figure out how to install Poll Daddy so you could chime in on questions like the one above.

With all the worries about the economy (well justified), I thought I would add in this very famous scene from the movie Network which I highly recommend. The movie is kind of ridiculous, but way WAY ahead of its time and has a lot of scenes that are classic/memorable. This one is probably at the top of the list.

As you may know from frequenting here… I do love a good tirade and this probably one of the most hardcore ever.

Love it or hate it, the Hills is for whatever reason a culutural phenomena that years from now will be mocked accordingly in “I love the 2000’s”. Its Gen Y’s Saved by the Bell, Beverely Hills 90210, Dawson’s Creek, etc all rolled up into one ridiculous borderline reality show.

However its clear to me that the writing is on the wall that this may be the last season or potentially second to last. MTV has a track record of having shows abruptly end and their has been talk that the show needs to wind down.

Here are 5 other key indicators that it could be curtains on the most ridiculous “reality” show ever perperatrated on the American public.

1- Whitney is going to have her own spin off in New York City. This leads me to believe SOMA could soon become its own ridiculous reality show.
2- Recently the salaries of the “stars” of the show were leaked. The fact that these guys are being paid to be pretentious socialites in this economic climate really sours the shows appeal to many viewers.

I recently joked that I wanted to infiltrate the cast of the Hills and would date any character to do so. Maybe that wouldn’t have been a bad career move.

The idea that they are paid ruins the guise that they are just trying to live their lives.

Heidi Montag: $65,000 per episode ($1.25 million per year)
Spencer Pratt: $65,000 per episode ($1.25 million per year)
Audrina: $35,000 per episode ($665,000 annually)
Whitney: $20,000 per episode ($380,000 per season)
Brody: $10,000 per episode ($190,000 a year)
Lauren “Lo”: $10,000 per episode ($190,00 for The Hills Season 4)
Stephanie: $8,000 per episode ($152,00 for Season 4)
Frankie: $0

3- MTV has a new show entitled “The Hills According to Me”. The show mocks the Hills (its great), but begs the question would they have a show mocking their hit, if it wasn’t winding down.

4- Finally, this show just needs to end. It’s worse then crack and it plagues millions of people. Everytime I sit through an episode, I feel guilty the moment the after show comes on and I realize what I am associating myself with. The near image of the co hosts below, makes me cringe violently.

Maybe its just that I am a closet tech geek, but I have really enjoyed the bubbling advertising battle between  Apple and Microsoft. For years Apple gained traction across the board in all competitive spaces they share with Microsoft while Microsoft has seen their strangle hold on everything slip.

Ipod > Zune

Safari > IE

Leopard > Vista

Iphone OS > Windows Mobile

Itunes > Xbox Live

Everything above is truly subjective to the user, but no doubt Apple has made deep inroads with better performing products,  superior usability, and streamlined sales and customer service functions.

On the advertising front, Apple has been on the attack for years as Microsoft opted to try to heed attention or resources to the growing Mac trend. Finally though they answered with their stereotypes campaign that was the second phase of their 300 million dollar advertising push. Phase 1 failed miserably with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld ads being cancelled abruptly.

Microsoft Answers Apple

At first I liked the ads, as they were finally adressing the fact that they had been beaten down by Apple in an image war. However this campaign quickly became overkill on my television and pretty much they all said the same thing : “Look we use Microsoft products, and we are kind of cool in different ways…. don’t be peer pressured into buying a Mac.”

It was a good message but it got old. There wasn’t anything that compelled me really. Maybe it was effective as a brand image stop the bleeding campaign.

However Apple answered quickly, and I got to give them commercial of the week. After beating up on Microsoft for years, I thought it may take awhile for Apple to react to getting punched back. I mean that’s got to throw you a curveball when suddenly the carcus that you thought was dead springs back to life.

Below are their 2 commercial that hit right back and while they aren’t brilliant by any stretch, the message is a lot stronger then Microsoft’s ads.

Apple’s newest ads put the focus back onto Microsoft by mocking the bloated advertising strategy and putting the attention right back on Microsoft’s inferior products. In no means is this battle going to end anytime soon, but until Microsoft can engineer products at the same level as Apple, its dumb to think that they can win a PR war against a craftier foe with a superior product.

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