Switchers was an advertising campaign launched by Apple Computer, Inc. (now Apple Inc.) on June 10, 2002. It featured what the company referred to as "real people" who had "switched" from the Microsoft Windows platform to the Mac. An international television and print ad campaign directed users to a website where various "myths" about the Mac platform were "dispelled". The television commercials were directed by Errol Morris.
 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(December 2011) |
A young woman who appeared in the commercials, Ellen Feiss, became an internet celebrity. Feiss was a friend of Morris's son Hamilton Morris, who also appeared in a commercial. [1]
Localized versions of the commercials, with local "switchers", aired in Iceland and Japan.
Certain ads featured celebrities, such as Tony Hawk, DJ Q-Bert, Yo-Yo Ma, Kelly Slater, Will Ferrell, and the members of De La Soul.
The Switch campaign, while distinctive, was not very effective, and was gradually phased out in 2003. This can be somewhat blamed, however, for the Macintosh lineup as the iMac G3 was becoming obsolete while the new iMac G4 that was showcased was considerably more expensive than comparable Wintel offerings. The advertising concept of the Mac's advantages over the PC was dropped in favor for the Get a Mac campaign in 2006.
Due to the simplicity of the ad, many parodies surfaced on the net shortly after the campaign started. Most of the parodies lamented features they had lost due to the switch, such as the ability to play popular games and use of the right mouse button. In what seemed like a parody, but was not, Microsoft's marketing team created a Web page titled "Confessions of a Mac to PC Convert", but Microsoft removed the Web page because it was fraudulent and misleading, even to the point of having a stock photograph used. [2]
The background music of the Switch Ads is "Spit" by John Murphy. The music was produced for TBWA Chiat Day by Kendall Marsh of Mental Music Productions, Sherman Oaks, CA.
Adware, often called advertising-supported software by its developers, is software that generates revenue for its developer by automatically generating online advertisements in the user interface of the software or on a screen presented to the user during the installation process. The software may generate two types of revenue: one is for the display of the advertisement and another on a "pay-per-click" basis, if the user clicks on the advertisement. Some advertisements also act as spyware, collecting and reporting data about the user, to be sold or used for targeted advertising or user profiling. The software may implement advertisements in a variety of ways, including a static box display, a banner display, full screen, a video, pop-up ad or in some other form. All forms of advertising carry health, ethical, privacy and security risks for users.
Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a specific good or service, but there are wide range of uses, the most common being the commercial advertisement.
A television advertisement is a span of television programming produced and paid for by an organization. It conveys a message promoting, and aiming to market, a product, service or idea. Advertisers and marketers may refer to television commercials as TVCs.
"1984" is an American television commercial that introduced the Apple Macintosh personal computer. It was conceived by Steve Hayden, Brent Thomas and Lee Clow at Chiat/Day, produced by New York production company Fairbanks Films, and directed by Ridley Scott. The ad was an allusion to George Orwell's noted 1949 novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which described a dystopian future ruled by a televised "Big Brother". English athlete Anya Major performed as the unnamed heroine and David Graham as Big Brother. In the US, it first aired in 10 local outlets, including Twin Falls, Idaho, where Chiat/Day ran the ad on December 31, 1983, at the last possible break before midnight on KMVT, so that the advertisement qualified for the 1984 Clio Awards. Its second televised airing, and only US national airing, was on January 22, 1984, during a break in the third quarter of the telecast of Super Bowl XVIII by CBS.
Got Milk? is an American advertising campaign encouraging the consumption of milk and dairy products. Created by the advertising agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners for the California Milk Processor Board in 1993, it was later licensed for use by milk processors and dairy farmers. Got Milk? launched in 1993 with the "Aaron Burr" television commercial, directed by Michael Bay. The national campaign, run by MilkPEP added the "got milk?" logo to its "Milk Mustache" ads beginning in 1995.
DoubleClick Inc. was an American advertisement company that developed and provided Internet ad serving services from 1995 until its acquisition by Google in March 2008. DoubleClick offered technology products and services that were sold primarily to advertising agencies and mass media, serving businesses like Microsoft, General Motors, Coca-Cola, Motorola, L'Oréal, Palm, Inc., Apple Inc., Visa Inc., Nike, Inc., and Carlsberg Group. The company's main product line was known as DART, which was intended to increase the purchasing efficiency of advertisers and minimize unsold inventory for publishers.
A parody advertisement is a fictional advertisement for a non-existent product, either done within another advertisement for an actual product, or done simply as parody of advertisements—used either as a way of ridiculing or drawing negative attention towards a real advertisement or such an advertisement's subject, or as a comedic device, such as in a comedy skit or sketch.
The Energizer Bunny is the marketing mascot of Energizer batteries in North America. It is a pink mechanical toy rabbit wearing sunglasses and blue and black striped flip-flops that beats a bass drum bearing the Energizer logo.
Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher when the ad is clicked.
Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to promote products and services to audiences and platform users. Online advertising includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising, and mobile advertising. Advertisements are increasingly being delivered via automated software systems operating across multiple websites, media services and platforms, known as programmatic advertising.
"Think different" is an advertising slogan used from 1997 to 2002 by Apple Computer, Inc., now named Apple Inc. The campaign was created by the Los Angeles office of advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day. The slogan has been widely taken as a response to the IBM slogan "Think". It was used in a television advertisement, several print advertisements, and several TV promos for Apple products.
Apple has used a variety of advertising campaigns to promote its iPod portable digital media player. The campaigns include television commercials, print ads, posters in public places, and wrap advertising campaigns. These advertising techniques are unified by a distinctive, consistent style that differs from Apple's other ads.
Microsoft Advertising is an online advertising platform developed by Microsoft that provides pay per click advertising on the Bing, Yahoo!, and DuckDuckGo search engines, as well as on other websites, mobile apps, and videos. In 2021, Microsoft Advertising surpassed US$10 billion in annual revenue.
The "Get a Mac" campaign is a television advertising campaign created for Apple Inc. by TBWA\Media Arts Lab, the company's advertising agency, that ran from 2006 to 2009. The advertising campaign ran worldwide in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Germany.
"Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch!" is a slogan that appeared in magazine, newspaper, and television advertisements for Tareyton cigarettes from 1963 until 1981. It was the American Tobacco Company's most visible advertising campaign in the 1960s and 1970s.
Apple Inc. has had many notable advertisements since the 1980s. The "1984" Super Bowl commercial introduced the original Macintosh mimicking imagery from George Orwell's 1984. The 1990s Think Different campaign linked Apple to famous social figures such as John Lennon and Mahatma Gandhi, while also introducing "Think Different" as a new slogan for the company. Other popular advertising campaigns include the 2000s "iPod People", the 2002 Switch campaign, and most recently the Get a Mac campaign which ran from 2006 to 2009.
"I'm a PC" is the title for a television advertising campaign created for Microsoft by ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CPB). The series first began to appear in September, 2008. The new series of commercials replace those that featured the pairing of Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates.
Microsoft adCenter Labs, is an applied research group at Microsoft that supports Microsoft adCenter. Microsoft adCenter, is the division of the Microsoft Network (MSN) responsible for MSN's advertising services.
AdBlock is an ad-blocking browser extension for Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Firefox, Opera, and Microsoft Edge. AdBlock allows users to prevent page elements, such as advertisements, from being displayed. It is free to download and use, and it includes optional donations to the developers. The AdBlock extension was created on December 8, 2009, which is the day that supports for extensions was added to Google Chrome. It was one of the first Google Chrome extensions.
iAd is a discontinued mobile advertising platform developed by Apple Inc. for its iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad line of mobile devices allowing third-party developers to directly embed advertisements into their applications. iAd is part of Apple's iOS 4. Announced on April 8, 2010, and originally slated for release on June 21, 2010, the actual date was changed to July 1, 2010. iAd was announced at Apple's June 7, 2010 keynote, with an iPad version appearing in the fall. Hosted and sold by Apple, the iAd platform was expected to compete with Google's AdMob mobile advertising service.