I’ve bought SanDisk flash memory to the exclusion of other vendors up until now, but I’m stopping that now. Apparently, just because my past two MP3 players haven’t come from SanDisk, I’m a sheep.
SanDisk… fine! Point out the flaws of your competitors - or competitor, since apparently Creative, iRiver, JoS and a bunch of others don’t exist anymore. That there’s only one online DRM-ed music store to buy from. That there’s “only” one color of earbuds (let’s forget about the thousands of industry standard headphones out there). Those are the only legitimate points I could find on the whole site. But for fuck’s sake, tell me more about your actual product. Tell me what it does that’s different from other players and how that’s better.
Have I told you how much I hate faked grassroots movements? Oh my god, you can use a stencil font! Hardcore! This is so genuine! From the streets! At least with Apple’s, Creative’s and iRiver’s advertising, they actually advertise and tell you about their product. If you need someone else to tell you to think for yourself, what does that say about you?
SanDisk: your customers aren’t bozos. They realize that if your product was worth buying in droves, it would be bought in droves - that if you were the leading vendor, you’d have no problems with an “iTatorship”. This isn’t even marketing - it’s just shooting yourself in the foot in a painfully obvious way.
(The obvious “Get a Mac” parallel: those ads are also filled with half-truths and dated notions - I haven’t seen a PC truly hang for about three years - but at least they’re pushing their own product without the guise of a fake underground movement, and at least they’re not insulting the users of their competitor’s products personally.)