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Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)

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Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)

#91

Post by rootsudo »

opo wrote: post #79
ecliptik wrote: post #23

The hippie copy mentioned was the ad my dad bought our first PC from. He was coming back from a business trip and asked the company computer guy to help him choose one for our family. We ended up with the 486DX2-50MHz "Integrated VESA System" [1]. Calling the Gateway 2000 customer support 800 number was my introduction to understanding computers and I am grateful to their staff for being patient with a 12 year old. W…

>Calling the Gateway 2000 customer support 800 number was my introduction to understanding computers and I am grateful to their staff for being patient with a 12 year old. You had a better experience than I had. Bought a Gateway, the cheap hard disk in it went back within a few weeks. Took two calls to support (each putting me on hold for maybe 45 minutes) to get them to admit the hard disk was bad and each call was…

I had a similar experience in the plentiful 4 era but they were nice and gave me an hard drive and the reinstall cd. It was really nice of them, the computer was probably not in warranty or barely was with a few days or weeks left and they really were nice to teenage me. This was a 40gb seagate hdd and windows xp pre sp2 to date myself lol

Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)

#92

Post by monocasa »

mrloopex wrote: post #44
timcobb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not china so much as Taiwan, japan, other places

Actually yes China. Hong Kong specifically before the manufacturing boom moved to mainland. By the 90s Japan had lost its DRAM edge and was not making any PC peripherals en masse. TSMC was barely three years old in 1990.

TSMC wasn't the major player until relatively recently. SuperMicro, Foxconn, Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, etc. have existed for quite some time and are all Taiwanese.

Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)

#93

Post by monocasa »

t-writescode wrote: post #65
bink wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's "bad" in the sense that it didn't accomplish the goal of selling a product (maybe not the case here) and "bad" in the sense that it made many readers cringe or was seen as stupid/tacky. I'm seeing more of the latter in these ads.

Young people cringe too much. Personality is good. Why does everyone want to find themselves on a safe, but boring, ranking system? (I know why. It’s way safer and we’re in dangerous times. Conservative personalities grow in times of pain. It still makes me sad.)

I tell young people that cringe is just a cage of the mind.

I was born in cringe. I grew up in cringe. I plan to be buried in a box made up of my cringe. All with a smile on my face.

Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)

#94

Post by EvanAnderson »

srj wrote: post #90

I still have my foam gateway cow!

I had a Customer who bought tons of Gateway PCs. They had a "pasture" cubicle full of foam cows. It was quite a sight.

A friend of mine had a Gateway PC at home (the first Pentium Pro I ever saw-- his stepfather splurged on it). The dog got ahold of the foam cow and tore a leg off, so my friend used markers to draw on "gore". I'll never forget the maimed Gateway cow.

Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)

#95

Post by EvanAnderson »

raldi wrote: post #14

“These are the worst ads I’ve ever seen.” “But you have seen them.”

These old Gateway ads made me remember ads a vendor ran in Computer Shopper featuring bikini-clad women. Their ads weren't as good as Gateway's, I guess, because I can't remember their name.

Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)

#96

Post by EvanAnderson »

userbinator wrote: post #66

I seem to remember computer ads in 90s had lots of rural and farming-related elements; I wonder if that was an attempt to appeal to the part of the population that probably had the least idea what a computer was. At that time I also recall some jokes about "the farmer in the Dell".

Another sizeable PC vendor, Midwest Micro (also traded under the name Systemax), was headquartered near the sub-1,000 population town of Fletcher, OH (out amidst farm fields). I can't say I remember their ads specifically, but I could see rural theming being a thing with them.

Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)

#97

Post by dolmen »

ratana wrote: post #80

I didn't have a Gateway 2000, but my friend did, and it came with an amazing keyboard with programmable macros. I was able to get one of those and used it for a few years, and never understood why such a thing wasn't more common.

I kept using the AnyKey keyboard long after I replaced my P5-90 with a newer home-assembled Celeron.

Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)

#98

Post by spacedcowboy »

cm2012 wrote: post #55
VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #24

What exactly was "bad" about these ads? They're eye catching, and it definitely interested me as a reader. Poor choice of title.

As an advertiser these are unusual but the clear strategy their marketing team took was to make their ads entertaining enough for people to want to read them.

Yep, I’m generally not an advert person, but even I remember the cow adverts in the otherwise staid PCW mag.

I think the only test of advertising is if it works. This seems to have worked on me…

Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)

#99

Post by massysett »

rfarley04 wrote: post #87
1970-01-01 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. They are good ads if we're still discussing them. This is one of those critics that assumes the current times are the 'correct taste' and anything foreign to their taste is poorly done, even when it resulted in sales.

Author here, from another issue I sent about my definition of bad ads for this newsletter: "tl;dr While I do exaggerate the “badness” of 80s tech ads to make things more fun, a nostalgic ad is not the same thing as an effective ad. What we see in advertising today is so depressing because it is often so bland AND more effective than its more playful predecessors." They are fun to look at now. And soooo much more crea…

I read your link and still don’t agree that these ads are “bad”.

I think these ads built brand awareness. The point of the MidWest Micro “Clue” ad was not necessarily to spur you to buy a MidWest Micro system today. The purpose was so that when you were in the market to buy a system, and you saw one of theirs on a magazine cover or (in the case of Gateway) at a mall storefront, you said “oh I’ve heard of them,” and then you buy one.

12 pages of marketing gimmicks builds awareness. Two pages of specs doesn’t. That I remember Gateway and MidWest Micro but not many of the others of the reams of price lists in Computer Shopper is a testament to this.

Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)

#100

Post by to11mtm »

rcxdude wrote: post #61
to11mtm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's actually a mortgage company that does worse; They call it the 'People Promise', and it sounds like a bonus, but; 1. It's actually a loan. 2. If you leave or are terminated at any point for the period, you have to pay back the ENTIRE loan amount. 3. Because it's a loan, if you -do- survive employment through the term, guess what, you now have to pay tax on the 'forgiven loan'. 4. If you don't take it, you don'…

Sounds like a typical retention/signing bonus, except structured so that you get the bonus up front and pay the tax later. The main question I would have is whether people who took it understood what they signed up for (i.e. were they misled somehow?). It's a bit weird for it to be mandatory but if you don't want to be on the hook for it, you could just keep the money in a savings account until the term expires.

> The main question I would have is whether people who took it understood what they signed up for (i.e. were they misled somehow?)

It gets complicated, by that I mean it's for many roles, not just 'IT', also I've never heard how it's actually been 'pitched' so IDK how much people may or may not have been misled. (That said, the mortgage industry even to consumers, regardless of who we are talking about, is rife with complaints about misleading claims, resulting in stuff like RESPA/TLIA->TRID)

> It's a bit weird for it to be mandatory but if you don't want to be on the hook for it, you could just keep the money in a savings account until the term expires.

Yeah, that's the smartest thing to do. But let's also be clear this isn't just an 'IT' thing for the company, some of the roles that have far lower hourly wages get the same 'agreement' and it places very different psychological pressures on folks.

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