Remond has tried to help sway those holding out on its most recent operating system update by conducting a Pepsi Challenge-style taste test called the Mojave Experiment involving Vista and a focus group of Linux and Mac users. The idea is that if they don’t know they’re using Vista, they’ll actually like it and prove that people just aren’t giving its OS a chance!
Shark Tales salutes this kind of guerilla marketing approach, and would like to suggest some other approaches that might yield even better results:
1. The Guantanimo Experiment: Users are locked up in isolation with nothing but Vista and a few breadcrumbs. Eventually, they’ll recognize the value of XP’s successor.
2. The Basic Instinct Experiment: Microsoft sends out “sales reps” who develop a “close relationship” with users that allows Vista to further “penetrate” the market.
3. The Pizza Experiment: The company may discover all it needs is cheap, free food to win over disappointed customers. Hey, it worked for Alec Baldwin’s character on 30 Rock.
4. The Payola Experiment: The company distributes “review” copies of Windows Vista to the media who write fawning articles about its merits in return for getting to keep it. (Oh wait, that experiment is already under way . . .)
5. The Appetite for Destruction Experiment: Microsoft gives users large hammers with which to vent their frustrations by crushing boxes of Windows Vista. If that doesn’t work, let them try them on company executives. With hard science like this, you have to try everything.
