Marketers Take Notice: Reddit is Very Much Here

From Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dave Grohl to a five-year McDonald’s employee and a valet for the stars, the “I Am A ____, Ask Me Anything (AMA)” section of Reddit takes on people from all walks of life. 

It can be a scary place. No moderator. No filters. Only rule is that you prove who you are. So why would POTUS and one of the wealthiest men in the world spend time answering questions, some intelligent, some inappropriate, from this fairly anonymous yet large (and to a point, influential) digital community? 

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Everyone is a PC

Everyone’s a PC

It's not the flashiest, cleverest ad, and it's interruptive and not at all entertaining, but I really like what Crispin Porter + Bogusky is doing with what everyone is calling Phase II of the $300-million Microsoft campaign. No more Jerry Seinfeld. Just a healthy dose of Foucaudian reverse discourse. Roll tape:
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Bill Gates Microsoft Ad

Seinfeld Takes Microsoft in a Weird Direction

I like this new direction from Microsoft/agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Bogusky's scam—and it's a good one—is applied tastefully to the Microsoft marketing problem: MS is not as cool as Apple. Unfortunately, the real problem for MS is that Vista is not easy to use, save with much expert help, and MS Office 2007 is basically an insult to IT people and consumers. But with the marketing, I think we're making progress. The Bogusky scam? Humanness. We had the Whopper Freakout scam where BK fanatics freaked out on camera (below). We had the Coke Zero scam where Coca-Cola "employees" (they were actors) approached various lawyers about suing Coke Zero (also below). All good scams. I like this one better.
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Microsoft Mojave Experiment

Mojavista, Baby

This week, Microsoft announced The Mojave Experiment—a test of the theory that consumers saw Vista in a negative light only because they saw Vista in a negative light. MS introduced a "new" OS under the name Mojave to a group of 140 users and let them play with it for a while. Later, it was unveiled that Mojave was really Vista. Gotcha, bitch!
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