Laptop Hunter vs. Get A Mac-Are You A Mac or A PC?

Of course everyone is familiar with those clever and entertaining Get A Mac ads which Apple has been airing since 2006. They manage to get a point across with a very minamalist white background with just dialog of the two greenscreened characters on the stage namely Mac(Justin Long) and PC (John Hodgson). Microsoft seemed to choose to ignore those compelling ads from the very beginning and then launched some not so compelling campaigns (remember the “fail” Seinfeld and Gates ads of last year?) to counteract the success that Apple is having.

Finally, this year, Microsoft came back at Apple with it’s Laptop Hunters campaign which is gaining some speed in the “race“. So much so, apparently that Apple, in what many consider a “bad move”, actually had their legal department call Microsoft to ask them to stop the ads because they inaccurately reflect the latest Apple drop in prices. In response, Microsoft’s COO Kevin Turner reportedly commented the following in his recent Worldwide Partner Conference Keynote Address, as posted on ArsTechnica:

And you know why I know [the commercials are] working? Because two weeks ago we got a call from the Apple legal department saying, hey — this is a true story — saying, “Hey, you need to stop running those ads, we lowered our prices.” They took like $100 off or something. It was the greatest single phone call in the history that I’ve ever taken in business. (Applause.)

I did cartwheels down the hallway. At first I said, “Is this a joke? Who are you?” Not understanding what an opportunity. And so we’re just going to keep running them and running them and running them.

Here is one of the newest ads launched by Microsoft:

Of course, Apple has retaliated with a new ad that clears up why Apple is still the right choice: