I was rather surprised to see this Adsense advertisement on my site. The ad title was “Apple Travel Laptop”, but it was a Sony VAIO advertisement. I immediately wondered, what has Sony got to do with Apple? Sony selling Apple notebooks? So, I clicked (I guess that’s what a good ad does eh, it makes you click through…) to find out. What was the resulting linked site all about? It was about Sony VAIO of course. Nothing about Apple in there. I felt annoyed at being tricked.
Interestingly enough, if you go to Google and search for “Apple Travel Laptop”, the 2nd sponsored link that appears is to the same Sony site. It seems that Sony is trying to position itself to be seen by buyers wanting to look for Apple notebooks.
Of course, there is nothing illegal about what they’re doing. But I just find it not in good taste to “steal” eyeballs this way. It would have been much nicer to do it in a more subtle way.
I liked the advertising tussle between SingTel’s red umbrella and MobileOne’s yellow sunshine, for example. They were quite funny. MobileOne’s recent swipe and other things red and green (StarHub) wasn’t so funny though.
Speaking of clever advertisements, have you seen the series of “Hi, I’m a Mac; And I’m a PC” advertisements ran by Apple? It started off very clever and funny. Of late, I think they are running out of steam, but they still make good entertainment that I do look forward to. Microsoft has finally gotten fed up at being “positioned” by Apple and decided to spend $300M on an advertising campaign that includes Jerry Seinfeld with Bill Gates. The first installment of the advertisements just totally doesn’t make any sense. Someone remade the first installment with an “alternate ending” that’s quite funny.
Anyway, back to the wrong that Sonny is doing. What in the world has Sony got to do with Apple? Are they kind of admitting that Apple products are better afterall?
That’s ambush marketing I believe. Cunning but effective.