On the latest Laptop Hunter ad, the “consumer”, Lauren, looks around for a laptop that has “speed, portability and battery life” that costs below US$1700 and eventually settled for a Dell Studio XPS 13 on sale for $899, which when all things considered, is pretty good a deal.

However, its the way the ad mislead viewers about the costs of Macs that makes me question the validity of their claims.

As seen in the screenshot above (around 20s into the ad), it clearly shows a MacBook (see MacBook as compared to the MacBook Pro – note the extra space besides the keyboard on the MBP for the speakers) but yet Lauren talked about the price of the MacBook Pro, which costs US$1999, putting it above the US$1700 budget.

Given that “Lauren” is to become a law student, it is highly unlikely that she would missed out on the MacBooks, which costs US$1299 (unibody) or US$999 for a slower white MacBook, which more than meets her budget. Conscious Misdirection indeed!

On a related note according to AppleInsider, those Laptop Hunters ads might have swayed consumers’ value perception – the belief that a given brand gives more value for money.

Quoting from a survey of 5,000 people, the result showed a marked increase (from almost 0 to 46.2) in the value perception of Microsoft where as Apple’s value dropped from around 70 to 12.4 at this period (on a scale of -100 to 100 (a score of zero means that people are giving equal amounts of positive and negative feedback about a brand – AdAge.com).

Analysts believed these changes in perception is a result of the success of Microsoft’s latest series of ads. To read more, do pop over to AppleInsider and AdAge for the details.

All I can say is, if spending more than US$300 million on ad campaigns, it better changed some perceptions – even if those “consumers” are ignorant like Lauren and not able to see beyond the added values of getting a Mac besides cost savings (for example – like having software suit iLife included for free with every new purchase).

Just for the fun of it – here’s Jennie, another Laptop Hunter (slightly NSFW)

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