The Members Forum

Battle of the Biggies....

Kevin Turner, Microsoft's Chief Operating Officer, told partners during his Worldwide Partner Conference keynote not only about the upcoming Microsoft Stores this fall to be placed near Apple stores but also about how Apple's lawyers wanted Microsoft to take down their Laptop Hunter ads. Here's the story he told (keep in mind that it's coming from a Microsoft executive):

And so we've been running these PC value ads. Just giving people saying, hey, what are you looking to spend? "Oh, I'm looking to spend less than $1,000." Well we'll give you $1,000. Go in and look and see what you can buy. And they come out and they just show them. Those are completely unscripted commercials.

And you know why I know they're working? Because two weeks ago we got a call from the Apple legal department saying, hey -- this is a true story -- saying, "Hey, you need to stop running those ads, we lowered our prices." They took like $100 off or something. It was the greatest single phone call in the history that I've ever taken in business. (Applause.)

Battle of the Biggies