Those Laptop Hunter Ads? They’re Working

The Laptop Hunters commercial campaign that Microsoft is pushing seems to be working. Young people in the 18-34 demographic see a laptop running Microsoft Windows as a better value for the money than an Apple laptop running OSX. Apple had dominated consumer mind share in the winter, but has since fallen behind Microsoft. All of this is according to daily interviews conducted by BrandIndex to track the relative strength of each brand. On a scale from -100 to 100, Apple current rests a little above 12 points, while Microsoft is sitting pretty at 46. A score of zero means that an equal amount of good and bad things are being said about a brand, so both brands are getting more positive than negative feedback. I wonder if the perceived value of Microsoft in the younger demographic has more to do with ignorance? That sub-$1000 PC laptop will only come with a trial version of anti-virus software, and won't come with much in the way of productivity software. You can get OpenOffice and a free version of AVG antivirus , but I'd wager that most folks will want to buy a commercial antivirus product for that extra piece of mind; and many will feel obligated to buy Microsoft Office because it's what everyone else uses. Suddenly that value laptop has a couple more dollar signs attached to it.