Ipod is the Best ever!

I think its all about the advertising used. When i watch thoose zune commercials...all i see is a very cool animation, but just an animation... You have no idea what theyre advertising till the end off the ad where it tell shows u the Zune logo... Now on the other hand when i see am ipod commercial, i see a very fun to watch yet still semi informative commercial about the product that ill be spending hundreds of dollors on... Thats my 2 cents :] *SIDE NOTE* first comment woot woot!

I disagree that the Zune had more features. It had an FM receiver. The wi-fi was very buggy out of the box, and songs died in three days anyway. Notwithstanding that any record company that wanted could opt out of the service (which, coupled with Microsoft's abandonment of it's own Plays For Sure) further reinforced it in buyers' minds that their music 'won't work.'

It is cool to see the imaging, branding-side comparison though.

Thanks for posting!

zune just hires great designers to spice up their crappy product. what's nice about ipods and iphones is you can simply take them to an apple store and they'll replace them for you if they stop working for some reason.

I do much prefer the Apple products and advertising. Their ads show off the product features very effectively and they all use recognisable music which is really what the product is about and it is very much in keeping with their past styling - very minimal.

I do agree that the Zune commercials have cool animation, but it doesn''t really mean anything. The Zune logo isn't well known enough to have that as the one thing telling you what the product is. For all I know it could be advertising eye implants!

Right now I can't really tell, what I am thinking.
The problem is, I don't know ZUNE Oo I think it isn't still released in Europe, so my oppinion of those Ad's are:

- first thought: "Havent I seen those animations bevore on older MTV commercials? (Talking about the Eye thing)

- second thought: what is Zune?

- third thought: If Zune is an musicplayer or sth. like that, what can it do and what are the ads for.

- last thought: Am I right about the fact that Zune isn't still released here or why am I hiking in the darkness right now.

my personal opinion is that it all has to do with the design of the product, not the features. the perfect example is that weeks after the ipod mini came out, the zen micro came out. the zen micro had more storage, fm radio, voice recording, and support for more files, and it cost less than the ipod. however, it was "chunky" compared to the ipod, and was hardly competition for apple. advertising has helped zune to do better than the zen, but the fact that zunes look like "bricks" and look like they are "made of cheap materials" has let ipods dominate the market.

As a budding marketing guy, I would say that the iPod videos are far superior. They make me want to grab my iPod and put on the earbuds.

The Zune video ads flop, i have no clue what it is, and although the animation is sweet, I have not a single idea what it is or what the product does.

Where Zune advertising is really sweet is in their print design. They have some really great posters and page ads.

Poor is the man who owns a Zune.

I agree that the ipod product its self is much better then the zune product and apple is overall much more customer friendly, but I couldn't disagree more with that first comment. When I see a really nice commercial and the animation and concept are amazing and then at the end it has the name of the product, I am much more inclined to look up that product then a company that just advertises its product. That's probably just me but I feel like the advertising for zune is much more appealing, especially their advertising campaign where they collaborated with all those artists. The ipod just does better became it was the first to be recognized and so it has that original, authentic feel about it, and the product is so much better... but thats just me :)

I have to say the Apple adds works better. I understand what Microsoft was trying to do with their adds create something fun to watch and instill the product name in the viewers mind. Problem is it wasn't pushed far enough and none of those adds I just watched I will remember tomorrow. while with the apple adds I enjoy them, understand the product and lastly the product is branded in my mind. I've seen those adds and still enjoy them.

Apple has established brand awareness and continuity that can be seen in every ad they do, Microsoft has not, the Zune ad's are a lot more visual intense, but Apple gets right to the point with features and ease of use. Apple definitely takes the cake on this one and I think it can be seen in the amount of market share they have.

hm i dont know much about the Zune...
but now ive seen the adds and they could have been produced for every product, if im watching a commercial i want to know what the product is like, what are his features etc. But im not interested in some animations (which are btw very amazing !) with the logo of the product. for me there are no "parallel lines" beetween the product & the add of Zune

I've never seen a Zune commercial on television. I really didn't even know about Zune except for seeing all the graphic design work to promote it around the blogosphere's design-related sites.

I think that's perhaps one area where they've had a shortfall. I've seen plenty of iPod commercials, though. So they perhaps didn't shell out enough money to advertise in the right time slots.

That, or their shortfall could be that they're really only trying to appeal to the college and high-school crowd, where iPod's clean whitespace approach appeals to the older generations, while the fun of it all still appeals to the high-school and college generations.

One other thing I might mention: Brand loyalty.

The zune adverts are nice peices of art but effective? Nah. Not that i blame them for the commercial failure, ipod just saturated too deeply to be ousted like that.

By the way, am i the only one who doesnt particularly like apple's style?

I have to agree with everybody else on this one. While the Microsoft has hired some superb designers for the advertisements for the Zune, the ipod is here to stay. No other company has been able to create a product that has ease of usability in a sleek sexy package like Apple.

I may be speaking out of bias as a Mac user myself, but it does seem that Apple puts a lot more thought into their products- laptops, ipods, and all. I know the price is usually quite a bit ridiculous, but there haven't been many companies that have been able to compete- AMAZING advertisements (though not very informative) they might have.

I prefer the iPod over the Zune, But I don't like where apple is going with putting no buttons on the ipod shuffle, Putting the controls on the headphones isn't a plus for me. Yes it is nice to have them there but I'm old skool . I like my buttons.

Wait for Zune HD and you will see...

Personally, I think the zune ads are fantastic. They just need a slogan. For example, for the "cafe" ad they couldve gone with something as simple as, "zune, because sharing is caring". Or for the fourth one, "see music in an entirely new way - zune".
Microsoft does have the better product, Microsoft just isn't seen as an organization that has favorable character. Apple is seen as "arty".

I personally think that Microsoft could saturate the market by launching a campaign along the lines of - "Zune - a music player made by music lovers". Now this may seem simple, but in essence they are implying that; if you choose anything other than a Zune you musn't like music that much. Everyone like to think they are a music lover, and thus they are more likely to purchase a Zune as their next media player.

Well, I prefer my guitar :-) In my opinion: the last iPod-ad with the paintdrips sucks a lot. It's a mixture of the old color-striped Apple-Logo (their hommage to IBM) and the one with the ridiculous "3D"-effect.
This time, grafically seen, Microsoft has done the better job.

I'm partial to the Zune because of the Zune-Arts campaign. They were the best client I have ever had the privilege to work for : http://zune-arts.net/dutemps --That, and they sent me one after the project. But since I'm on a mac I couldn't make it work :(

iPod beats the zune because apple has design!
zune just looks crappy as if it comes from communism-russia

"Poor is the man who owns a Zune."

I laughed at this.

Personally, I think those Zune ads kinda sucked. As someone mentioned earlier, they are similar to MTV ads, but work far less effectively. The funny thing is that the iPod commercials are far more informative than those of the Zune, even though they are far better known. Rather than marketing its features (which to most people are unknown) they decide to throw some viral clips at us. Personally, I didn't even like them from an artistic standpoint.

Zune's print ads are pretty cool but thats about it.

The Zune ad is probably one of the most phallic adverts I've seen in a while now. Bet the designers had fun with that one.

i "like" the zune ads much more than the ipod ads... but in the way i like watching video posts on this site, for pure artistic enjoyment... I think showing the zune logo after the end of them doesnt really accomplish much, you could just toss any logo after animation like that and it still will not mean anything... but i "like" the ad regardless...

i dont like apple ads as much... but ive owned 3 ipods, and an iMac. Theyre just more informative...

That and being a windows user for 11 years has created a deep distrust and lack of confidence in anything microsoft makes. I guess i just dont like bugs or DRM.

Guarantee there were more "oooooo's and Ahhhhhhs" when the iPod is demo'd compared the the Zune animations. Apple has their fingers on the pulse of the "impress me more" generation and it shows in the forethought they put into all their products.

I watched all the Zune adds in this post. Great animation, but they fail to highlight the very product that they are trying to sell! What is it? What does it look like? How does it work? Why should I own one?

Horrible marketing as usual on the part of Microsoft.

I haven't seen any Zune commercial on the tv, neither have I seen iPod commercials.
But the marketing of Apple has made it's product very appealing and easy-going to the main audience. That being said, I won't make the mistake of buying an iPod again.