Microsoft roasts its own software in new ads promoting Office 365 over Office 2019

[The AchieVer]

Microsoft roasts its own software in new ads promoting Office 365 over Office 2019

 

Microsoft would really like you to buy a subscription instead of just paying for Office once

Microsoft launched Office 2019 late last year, but if the company’s new ad campaign is anything to go by, the company would really prefer if you didn’t buy it. Instead, Microsoft’s latest ads pit sets of identical twins against each other to complete office-themed challenges, with the end result showing that the company feels you’d be much better off with a monthly or yearly subscription to Office 365 instead, as spotted by TechCrunch.

The commercials are, put simply, extremely bizarre, with Microsoft intentionally going out of its way to show just how bad and inefficient the one-time payment version of its productivity suite is compared to the constant stream of updates it pushes to the subscription-based version. 

It’s the style of ad that you’d assume Microsoft would use to show Office’s strengths compared to a competitor like Apple’s iWork suite or Google Drive, right down to the heavily skewed tasks that of course favor a specific side. But it’s dramatically more baffling to see those kinds of marketing tactics used by a company against its own products. 

That Microsoft is pushing Office 365 over the one-time purchase Office 2019 option is no surprise — a single license of Office 365 Personal costs $69.99 per year, compared to the one-time cost of Office 2019 for $149.99. Given that you’ll recoup the cost of the single payment in about two years of use, and the fact that most people don’t really need to update Office that often (at a certain point, any version of Word will write that essay on the American Revolution or lab report just about the same), it’s easy to see why Microsoft would rather lock customers into recurring subscriptions to keep profits up. 

Odd as the ads may be, they do provide a good example of the growing divide between the modern trend of software as a service, with apps like Adobe Creative Cloud and Office, and the more traditional payment system that customers are used to. And if those trends are anything to go by, odds are Microsoft won’t be the last company trying to convince customers to make the switch to subscribe.

 

Source

[debebee]

Microsoft: Don't buy Office 2019

by Martin Brinkmann on February 07, 2019 in Microsoft - No comments

It is rare that a company advises its customers to avoid a product that they produce.

It sounds like a bad business decision, but that is exactly what Microsoft attempts to do with a series of videos that highlights why customers should not buy the company's new Office version Office 2019 but subscribe to the company's Office 365 product instead.

Microsoft published a series of videos to hammer the point home; called The Twins Challenge, Microsoft gave identical twins the same tasks to see how they would perform them in Office 2019 and Office 365.

During one test, twins were asked to improve a resume, add relevant skills, and send it to recruiters in the end. In another, they were asked to create a spreadsheet with the United States state capitals, populations, and largest cities.

The videos cover Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

The outcome, you could have guessed it, was that the twin using Office 365 completed the task faster and more efficiently than the twin using Office 2019.

Microsoft's message is clear: pick Office 365 because it gets jobs done faster and is better than Office 2019. Don't buy Office 2019 unless you really have to and cannot subscribe to Office 365.

The videos are ads, obviously, and it should not come as a surprise that the selected tasks favor the twin using Office 365.  If you would have asked them just to edit a document or create an Excel spreadsheet using data that is available to them already, the outcome would probably have been that they completed the tasks in about the same time.

Microsoft uses various strategies to make Office 2019 less attractive when compared to Office 365. The company made Office 2019 Windows 10 exclusive on Windows, and increased the price of select editions of Office 2019. Last but not least, Microsoft revealed that it won't add any new features to Office 2019 after its release. It will produce security and stability updates though.

Office 365 offers some advantages when it comes to price. While Office 2019 customers pay only once for a one-device license and Office 365 customers per month or year, Office 365's license is good for installing Office on multiple devices; this may or may not be a selling point.

Some customers may dislike the "cloud" nature of Office 365 and that everything is connected. Others may not need to extra features that Office 365 or Office 2019 offers and stick with an earlier version of Office.

Now You: Office 365 or Office 2019? Which would you pick and why?

 

Source: https://www.ghacks.net/2019/02/07/microsoft-dont-buy-office-2019/

[virge]

So they are saying buy Office 365 instead so we can easily spy on all the documents your store on our servers and we get to charge you a monthly fee forever instead of just one flat payment.

[debebee]

Yes the are saying they are now selling services and now you have RENT to use their product ..

(pretty much ending office piracy)

 

 

[Threepwood]

OK! I won't buy Office 2019. 

 

Switching to LibreOffice or to SoftMaker Office 2016 for Windows might be an altenative.

 

You can get SoftMaker Office 2016 for free here: 

http://www.softmaker.de/reg/ofw16free_en.htm

 

[Pete 12]

Using Office 2019 C2R , awsome and fast ............

I like it ! 

[Nastrahl]

When they'll sell a 35€ Office 365 for a year as you can find in the Internet for Office 2019, I may reconsider not subscribing.

[vitorio]

3 hours ago, teodz1984 said:

Yes the are saying they are now selling services and now you have RENT to use their product ..

(pretty much ending office piracy)

 

 

That is true. But I learned some years back that as a marketing rule you never allow space for the competition for your products. That is what they are doing, renting their products. Sooner or later some new Office products will occupy this space and Microsoft will loose customers.

In my country there was a rice provider, with no competition for his product, that decided not to bring it back during a certain time due to certain cost that they protest regarding shipping the products.

What happened?, the competition decided to bring the products by airplane, more expensive, but since the number one choice was not available they occupied  their market place

In summary,  the consumer has the opportunity to try other brands and at the end the market share dropped from a 90-99% to less that 50% for the number one prefered brand.

 

[Nastrahl]

2 hours ago, vitorio said:

That is true. But I learned some years back that as a marketing rule you never allow space for the competition for your products. That is what they are doing, renting their products. Sooner or later some new Office products will occupy this space and Microsoft will loose customers.

In my country there was a rice provider, with no competition for his product, that decided not to bring it back during a certain time due to certain cost that they protest regarding shipping the products.

What happened?, the competition decided to bring the products by airplane, more expensive, but since the number one choice was not available they occupied  their market place

In summary,  the consumer has the opportunity to try other brands and at the end the market share dropped from a 90-99% to less that 50% for the number one prefered brand.

 

 

But sadly the question is: is there actually a serious competitor to any Office's components ?

 

Because everywhere you have to give numeric paperwork to administrations or companies, they use Office and expect at least either a .doc(x) or a .pdf and you can't really take the risk to screw up formatting (if they don't use PDF at all), formulas, or such.

[debebee]

libre office will never catch up with office in the corporate world..   google has no solid competition...  word perfect still exits e but isn't a frontrunner like it used to in  the 80s

[Kalju]

It makes me wonder that anyone could think of buying Microsoft Office at all, and if somebody thinking, then must have very special talent.

[debebee]

corporations can afford it so, they will go with the flow

[The AchieVer]

 

[Karlston]

Of course you don’t want to buy Office 2019

Nice of Microsoft to reinforce that point.

 

 

Microsoft is saying more about its customers than its products with the three new ads. MS obviously doesn’t think its customers are savvy enough to figure out the “tests” are rigged to use features in Office 365 that aren’t in Office 2019. They aren’t Challenges. They’re feature demos.

 

Of course the products are different. The feature sets are different. And, of course, reliance on the internet is different — when Microsoft’s servers go down, you can take your fancy cookie-cutter resume building program and stick it where the sun don’t shine.

 

I guess that’s something good to know if you need to list the population of every state in a spreadsheet. Except it’s, you know, old data.

 

I recall vividly that you couldn’t even get Excel to show updated stock quotes until a year ago. I moved to Google Sheets for that very reason. Never looked back.

 

Source: Of course you don’t want to buy Office 2019 (AskWoody - Woody Leonhard)

[Nastrahl]

10 hours ago, teodz1984 said:

corporations can afford it so, they will go with the flow

 

It's probably because it's the most advanced and developed one too.

 

For the customers, you can buy a retail key for 35€ for Pro Plus instead of a  535€ so it's not worth going for the competitors ones.

[csicsu46]

sorry for offtopic, but where can i download official msdn or vslc office 2019 iso-s ? i dont like the online installers..like Office_2013-2019_C2R_Install_+_Lite_v6.5.6.. THX ! for help !

[Jogs]

There are lots of alternatives available which are perfect for most users. Only if some one needs some specific feature then one need to buy MS Office. Most of the alternatives now can read and write MS Office documents quite smoothly.

[BimBamSmash]

For now I use Office 2019, thanks to @vyzzer and @DR_ADHAM. No plans to use or move to the 365 service for personal use in any form. Don't have concerns about them snooping and all. More concerned about seeing an extra column in my bills right now while I am between jobs and have to make do with small things here and there. Once I get a formal job going it will be my workplace's concern whether or not they want me to use 365 for work. I simply won't have use for this suite on my own then.

 

From a gaming perspective however I am concerned about the day Windows follows this route. Not that game devs aren't pushing for subscriptions already. But I simply don't want to pay a monthly fee for the OS just to turn on my old PC and get some old gaming going.

 

 

Edit: Aren't they pulling the same trick with the LTSC flavor for Windows 10? It looks like they are showing us the best course of action by labeling this right option with the term "don't use".

[sam_ra1n]

For simple task of documentation , I believe office 2019 has all without any doubt.

 

[luisam]

On 2/7/2019 at 10:08 AM, teodz1984 said:

libre office will never catch up with office in the corporate world.

 

It's just an artificial need. Until 2016 corporate world was 100% happy with Office 2013 and counting backward, just remember how happy they were using 95, 97, 2000, XP, 2003, 2007 and 2010! If you have Office 2016 it will cover ALL your REAL "corporate" demands and you won't have for sure any format conflict with Office 2019 or 355..

And of course all those currently FREE "office alikes" cover the needs of 99,99% of standard users and most of them are at least as complete as office 2013!

[debebee]

That is the first maxim in marketing: Create a NEED (however shallow) and people will buy it ...

right Apple  cough cough

[Jogs]

Some times in the corporate world buying expensive products can bring lots of profits, profits not for the company but for the person who ordered the product.

[Jordan]

Topics merged.