OpenOffice ads and suggestions for future Sun ads

  • Articolo

I’m sitting on the bus right now and I see a bunch of ads for OpenOffice,org. I suppose putting ads on the route that runs from Redmond to Seattle is pretty clever as they’re sure to get throngs of Microsoft employees looking at it and surely having a reaction. It’s not so much that they are advertising as much as the slogans they are using. For those who haven’t seen the ad campaign, it is essentially the T-shirt covered torsos of men and women with each torso reading a different slogan for OpenOffice. Of course, pretty much every slogan is a dig at Microsoft or Office. The sayings include “Us-opoly”, “Compatible with expensive, closed, memory-loving software” (it’s like I hear Jonathan Schwartz’s voice), “Prehistoric reptilians welcome” (ahh, a jab at the MS Office ad campaign), and “By the people, for the people” (here I thought people made MS Office--I guess those prehistoric reptilians are actually the ones who write the software). Well, as a guy who did his stint in b-school and a marketing gig at Microsoft, I thought I could lend some creativity to help Sun with their next wave of T-shirts not just for OpenOffice, but for the whole company.

ü “We sell SPARC CPUs. Remember SPARC?”

ü “Sun Microsystems: Where Unix came to die.”

ü “Solaris, er, Linux, no Solaris, no Linux, uh Solaris, no, aw never mind”

ü “AMD CPUs. Linux OSs. We just add the cool logo.”

ü “It's a good thing we didn't buy Apple.”

ü “At least we didn’t throw chairs when Bill Joy left (they were repossessed).”

ü "We're the kings of open software (except Java)"

ü

“Spite is so a business strategy” 

ü “Yes, we are still in business. Why does everyone ask us that?”

Good luck Sun. I hope these help and you guys make a profit again.

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