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Six Flags Launches "Switch" Ad Campaign

In what is being described as a unique advertising campaign approach, Six Flags has started a national campaign trying to convince Windows users to switch to Six Flags.

The campaign, featuring "ordinary people" against plain white backgrounds, is one of the most aggressive efforts to date to convince users of a particular computer operating system to switch to an amusement park chain, with only Cedar Fair's long-ago "Cedar Point: Way More Fun Than the VIC-20" campaign being similarly extensive.

The first ad, featuring Anne Marie Osbourne of New Orleans, Louisiana, includes her discussion of why she switched. "Windows never provided any thrill to me. Sure, it was a fundamentally acceptable computer operating system, if a little buggy, but I was never able to get it to fling me around in all directions like the flat rides at Jazzland [a Six Flags property] or give me airtime like the Mega Zeph [wooden coaster] there. If Six Flags can provide all that, why can't Microsoft?"

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, when reached for comment, immediately purchased every amusement park in the country not owned by Six Flags, priced each of them at $4 (including an open bar), and prohibited any customer who had visited a Six Flags park after September 23, 2002, from entering his parks. His attorneys denied any anticompetitive intent.