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Microsoft gets away with overcooking Sausage

By Barry Collins

Posted on 16 Dec 2009 at 10:40

The advertising watchdog has exonerated Microsoft, after the company was accused of misleading consumers with its "I'm a PC" campaign.

The ad in question concerned a five-year-old boy and his rabbit, which was rather insensitively named Sausage. The TV slot showed the boy taking a photo of Sausage, plugging his camera into his laptop, and emailing the picture to his aunt, before delivering the familiar line: "I'm a PC and I'm five years old".

One viewer complained that the ad was misleading because there were more steps involved in the process of emailing the photo than were shown, and that five-year-old Lewis would need technical assistance to complete the process.

Microsoft denied the ads had been fiddled, claiming only minor steps (such as entering the email address) had been omitted.

In its defence, Microsoft claimed that "although the five-year-old boy (Lewis) featured in the ad had been taught how to use the technology, he had genuinely carried out the procedures shown in the ad himself."

The software giant further claimed that a "large number of studies and reports had been produced showing that children can, and do, use PCs from an early age and that Lewis was perfectly capable of using the Microsoft Live software shown in the ad."

The ASA sided with Microsoft, concluding "that there was no suggestion in the ad that Lewis had learnt how to use the software himself and that most viewers would understand that he had been taught how to use it and was subsequently able to able to carry out the tasks."

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User comments

“One viewer complained “

With Vista and Windows 7 it's very quick and easy to e-mail an attachment.
Just use the 'send to e-mail' option. I'm sure most 5 year old boys could do it ( plus some girls too, however boys more often grasp tech quicker at a young age).

“One viewer complained “

I understood the advertising watchdog did not consider any complaint until enough complaints are received to justify them to bother to look into the complaint.

By Tibbs on 16 Dec 2009

My 2 year old can

My two year old (2 3/4 years) already does exactly this. She has one of the rugged children's cameras and knows how to plug it into my Windows 7 PC, which button to click for "Send to Email" button, then click on her Grandma or Granny's photo in my contacts list to put their email address in the bar and finally which button to use to send it. Does mean they have very full inboxes with all kinds of photo's, but shows you don't need to be as old as 5 to know how to do this.

By skarlock on 16 Dec 2009

All that time and money wasted by the ASA which forced Microsoft to waste time and money simply because "One viewer complained".

The ASA are idiots.

@skarlock - impressive work by your daughter there!

By Grunthos on 16 Dec 2009

@Grunthos

Why does the number of complainants have ANY bearing on the validity of the complaint? If an advert can be demonstrated to have broken the advertising guidelines, does it matter if it was one or one thousand people who brought this to the attention of the ASA?

By Bassey1976 on 16 Dec 2009

Going the extra mile

In this case the complainant was (imho) someone at the advertising agency hoping to wring some extra free publicity via the ASA. And what do you know, it worked!

By Noghar on 16 Dec 2009

@tibbs

You are thinking of the ITC - television standards. The ASA must investigate any complaint within their remit.

I think this complainant may have been a Mr S Jobs from i-town in appleshire

By Socrates on 16 Dec 2009

"One viewer complained that the ad was misleading because..." is not the same as "only one viewer complained". I think Tibbs is right in thinking that there has to be a certain number of complaints before the ASA have to react.

By jenny_hearn on 16 Dec 2009

This is just another unfair attack on Microsoft. Glad Microsoft won this ridiculous case.

By curiousclive on 16 Dec 2009

My 5 year old can do this and much more with my XP PC so I agree that this was waste of time & money, which could be used to tackle other MS issues

By alisavas on 17 Dec 2009

But all people ever do is complain. How about voting with their wallets, or otherwise? Oh, silly me, that requires effort.

By Klobba on 17 Dec 2009

A mac user didn't realise how easy it was to transfer then email a photo using a pc, so complained thinking the advert was fabricated. This is because all Apple users know Apple adverts lie about how easy it is to use Apple products and the OS is extremely unintuitive and counter productive.

By dodge1963 on 18 Dec 2009

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