How much trouble is Vista actually in?

Just lately it seems to be one thing after another. First there were the stories of people “upgrading” Vista to XP. The the whole Vista-ready debacle and the resulting class-action lawsuit. And now we have panic setting in over the end-of-life of XP.

To get around the end-of-life problem according to a report on Silicon.com, Dell and HP are preparing to use the downgrade rights that come with Vista to carry on supplying XP preloaded on new machines. If this receives significant take-up it could be a real blow to Microsoft – new machines are the main route to upgrade for the vast majority of users and the one that will deliver the best Vista experience.

Of course it is almost inconceivable that Vista will fail. Windows as a whole still tops 90% market share and within that Vista racks up just over 14%, dwarfing OSX and Linux. It could be simply a case of allowing users to stall for time until Vista’s problems are ironed out. But with with the next version of Windows slated for a 2010 release (that’s if it comes out on time – a big if based on the experience of Vista/Longhorn) it is conceivable that people may leapfrog Vista and go straight from XP to Win7. And with the suggestion that Microsoft may delay the XP end-of-life date, this may become a very real possibility.

Of course, although bad, this would not be the worst possible outcome for Microsoft. That scenario is one where there is a wholesale shift to Linux allowing users to abandon paid-for licensed software for good. This last week has seen the release of the latest version of Ubuntu which is estimated to already have over 8 million users and offers the most Windows-like user-friendliness of the Linux flavours. Even Apple has been posting impressive sales results for its PCs – 51% more that the same quarter last year and an increase running at some five times the industry average. And, should we get to a ubiquitous web model where all that users need is a browser then all bets are off.

But back to today. Yes Vista is in trouble but I can’t see this as the tipping point for a wholesale migration away from Windows per se – not yet anyway. Personally, I think Microsoft would be mad not to extend XP’s life – no user wants to be forced into an upgrade (especially one that is receiving so much negative publicity), it will simply reinforce the view of Microsoft as an unhealthy monopoly.

In the meantime, to celebrate the release of Vista SP1 there’s this little gem which, depending who you believe is either ‘ironic’ or ‘moronic’ – you decide:

The lesson here: never, ever do a corporate song.

Some microsites are little pieces of joy. Some are functional ‘more info’ affairs. Then there are those that turn you from being positive and excited to being frustrated and annoyed.

Naming no names, but take the Canon 450D site. Now, to declare my allegiances, I own a Canon 300D (in fact it is my fourth Canon) plus a bunch of lenses and I am beginning to think about upgrading. As such, I’m pretty excited about the brand spanking new 450D.

So today I got sent the regular You Connect email which contained an invitation to go to the Let’s Play site and take a look at the 450D. Perfect for a Friday afternoon I thought and off I went.

The site opens with the obligatory preloader counting up. But on my Mac it counted one number per second (without saying what it was counting up to ). I tried a different browser, same thing. Then I tried a PC which sat blank screened for ages before finally counting up at a reasonable speed.

Lesson 1: give your audience a clear idea of how much longer they are going to have to wait so they can decide whether they should bother.

Then we get to a choice of whether to ‘play’ in the city with an urban-looking woman or the mountains with a fleeced up guy. Hover over the nav and the two models change places, the one at the back going nicely out of focus. Now, while this is pretty, if this was the reason for the preload time it really wasn’t worth it.

Lesson 2: remember your visitors come to the site for a reason, don’t let the eye-candy get in their way.

I clicked ‘city’ and was introduced to a nav device that promised that I could pan round an image and the click a hotspot to zoom in and discover more. I was also introduced to another preloader (a progress bar this time). And I waited again. Finally, it opened the image with the urban model poised to take the shot. As I moved my cursor the the edges it allowed me to pan around the image. There was one hotspot. Just one. No choice, no real interaction. I started to wonder why Canon didn’t simply run a fully preloaded animation or a video or anything but this.

Lesson 3: if you are going to offer the audience choice, make sure there is some element of actual choice involved.

So I clicked the hotspot and, in the process, activated the third preloader of the experience, this time a spinning wheel of dots (at least there is variety while you wait). This (after a while) activated another animation that placed the viewer inside the head of urban woman as she moved in for the shot. She shoots, she scores and you are then presented with a new screen and a stack of photos that allow you to flick through the camera’s features – all illusion of the original idea now (thankfully) gone. Of course what you are left with is the most standard of microsites (and not a particularly interesting one at that).

Now don’t get me wrong, having an immersive microsite experience can be a really lovely thing. And it certainly suits the Canon photography brand (and actually, Canon did a much better job on the earlier 400D site). But this was just painful (and would have been even if it worked faster). As with doctors, the first rule of marketing must be “do no harm” – a rule this site could do with heeding.

I still love Canon cameras, but I’ll think twice before responding to their marketing again.

You know how it is, sometimes when you’re trying to come up with ideas you get stuck. Just plain old-fashioned stuck. Everything you think of comes back to the same worthless thought you had an hour ago. You can see only one route to a solution and frankly it’s heading nowhere. And, of course, the deadline isn’t getting any further away.

While I cover a couple of ways out in Cracked, there’s a really useful one that wouldn’t fit in: oblique strategies. Originally oblique strategies was a card deck created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt to help jog the mind when the fog of work pressure descended (details here).

It consists of over 100 cards (or as the deck terms it “Over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas”) and the idea is that when you get stuck you pick a card at random and consider your problem in light of what it says. And they are oblique. So flipping my own deck at random gives me, “Go to an extreme, come part way back.” Now of course, if you are stuck that might be just the help you are looking for. What is the extreme consequences of the problem? What would be an extreme solution? How far back would we need to come to create a workable answer? Work that train of thought until it goes no further and then select another card.

While there are a few such creativity decks around, for me oblique strategies works because it doesn’t try to solve the problem for you. It still gives you room to think. And it can take you off in unexpected and useful directions.

You can still buy the physical deck (it comes in a lovely understated black box) and costs £30. But you can also download it free as a widget for Mac, PC and Linux.

Don’t say I never give you anything.

You can now download your free, gratis, for-absolutely-no-money copy of Cracked: a small guide to big ideas. Originally created as a printed book for internal and client use, Cracked is a guide to creative problem solving. In it I cover some ways to approach marketing problems, a bit on audiences and then a bunch of creative tips, tricks and techniques. I’ve reformatted it for screen and it weighs in at 472Kb.

I’ve licensed Cracked under Creative Commons which basically means that you can do what you like with it as long as you credit me as the original author and offer the same rights to anyone you pass it (or derivative work) on to. Click the license badge on the front cover for full details.

Take a look, see what you think. There’s a clickable email link on the last page where you can get in touch and let me know your thoughts. And, of course, if you want to see any of this stuff put into practice, you know where to come. Enjoy.

Viral marketing is often presented as the Holy Grail of marketing. The story goes something like this: create a clever/funny low-budget video, whack it up on YouTube and watch the hits roll in as people send the link to friends who themselves forward it on in turn. The numbers are certainly seductive, YouTube’s all time most viewed video has to date racked up over 82m views.

Of course, most of these are either unintentionally viral or music videos. Once we’re into commercial efforts, the numbers drop significantly (but are still pretty high). Take the excellent Will it Blend? series. The top viewed video – blending an iPod – has had over 5m views. Most efforts, however, score in the thousands rather than millions. And many more produce efforts that have nothing whatsoever to do with either their product or brand.

In many ways, it’s a shame that viral has come to mean video (or at a stretch, video + games). This has constrained the thinking of many companies, restricting their options and harming their results.

The latest crop of Change This manifestos could help. It includes the wonderfully named, Word of mouse by David Meerman Scott. While in some ways it presents nothing staggeringly new, it does give a good overview of viral that goes beyond YouTube to encompass ebooks, “secret” microsites and branded utilities (plus the obligatory bit on video as well). It’s well worth a read.

Over the years I’ve managed to hold a range of contradictory views about creative awards. My current default stance is to be firmly against them but then every now and again, there’s a piece of work that I feel deserves wider recognition and a nice trophy on a small plinth seems as good a way of achieving this as any.

The plus-side of the awards argument goes something like this: Awards set a benchmark of creative excellence. They help agencies recruit new, talented people and raise morale internally. And they give prospective clients the reassurance that they’re buying into a quality agency.

But…

The thing about awards for me (and I’ve judged on a few) is that the work that wins awards tends to be the kind of work that wins awards. By this I mean it tends to follow a certain advertising mindset. It has a self-referential cleverness about it that appeals to people in the business. A few years back, I was on an awards panel and we were getting down to the choice of the actual winner. The debate, rather than being about creativity or innovation or effectiveness, centred around whether the piece was a [insert award name] type of piece and the possible reaction of the audience at the ceremony. This really can’t be healthy.

Also, awards tend to pigeohole work into categories. But today, the most interesting work sits outside traditional categories. It’s the mixed up, mashed up stuff that’s pushing things forward. The catch-all of ‘integrated’ doesn’t really cover it – especially as for many awards this comes down to “and here’s a couple of other things we tagged on to our ad campaign.” And let’s not even get started on the cost.

So I tend to agree with Bruce Mau in his Incomplete Manifesto for Growth:

Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

But then again, sometimes, on a weak day, what I wouldn’t give for a One Show or Epica.