I believe Microsoft employees created this video to self-critique the different marketing strategies that Microsoft takes and comparing it to Apple's marketing strategy. Apple is known for marketing their products with very simple and clean visuals while Microsoft is known for marketing their products with lots of information and colors. I believe this "case study" is parodying Microsoft's marketing strategy and arguing the importance of keeping it simple. The video starts off showing Apple's product which is basically just a white box with a picture of an ipod on one of the faces.

At first, I didn't really know what the video was getting at, but as it continued, It was quite funny that they realized the unnecessary aspects of their packaging. They want to emphasize how useless much of the information is and how it is all squeezed on there that nothing stands out anymore more. Feature creep and information overload can cover the real information that the customer wants to know. This makes for bad communication because the customer has to search for the details.

Whenever I was first watching the video assigned for this reading response, all I could think about was how drastically different the two companies choose to package their products. Later, I actually realized that the Microsoft employees that created this video were actually self critiquing their own company! The video starts off by showing the simplistic, yet elegant, packaging that Apple used to package an early iPod. It then shows how Microsoft would choose to redesign the packaging if they were given the chance.

I think this video is awesome. As far as packaging goes these two companies could not be any different. The video was a great way to show criticism towards the designs of their packages. Showing the progression as they added different elements to the package was better emphasized through the video. Information overload compromises a piece of writing because it very distracting. When there is too much information on a package it can distract from the information that is actually important. Looking at the package that they created, you can hardly tell what the product actually.

The video created by Microsoft employees emphasizes the value in simplicity. I think the video did a good job of showing multiple ways that overloading something with information does not help. Having too much stats, features, and logos can cause them to compete with each other for the customers attention. It comes to the point where all of it is too much and important things or the whole product will be overlooked. It is interesting to see the huge differences in Microsoft and Apple's advertising technique. Apple has used extreme simplicity and it has worked very well for them.