14 DAY TRIAL // You've heard it before and you've been hearing about it since Windows Vista. Microsoft has made it a motto for the Vista marketing campaign. You've even uttered it a couple of times in your own life. But the real question is, will you say it for Windows Vista? Microsoft's "The Wow Starts Now" marketing campaign for Windows vista is in high gear.
From trips to space to projecting the name of the operating system on the 421 meter high Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai China, Vista's marketing has been designed to Wow potential customers into coughing up the money for the operating system.
In the Windows Vista Wow TV commercial, Microsoft has not been shy about offering alternative Wow. From man's first attempts to conquer space, with the launch of the Mercury shuttle, to Pele dribbling, to the fall of the Berlin wall and to your average snow day, but through the eyes of a child, Microsoft has proposed universal Wow moments, that in their vision are comparable with what you will first experience with your first boot into Windows Vista.
The fact of the matter is that "Wow" is subtle, evocative, universal, familiar and drives a core experience for all of us. But will it be in concert with Vista? In fact, isn't a tad arrogant from Microsoft to assume that Vista is equivalent with the Mercury flight or with the fall of the Berlin wall?
Wow reduces the logic behind Windows vista to a minimum. Wow is instinctual, an onomatopoeia, a sound. But relying on the user's emotions to drive a sale can backfire. Just imagine a user in front of a Windows Vista computer discovering that the operating system is not compatible with applications that he has used on an everyday basis in XP. That's a whole different kind of Wow!