- Good, bad or confused, the commercials got everyone talking about Microsoft, didn’t it?
- Even if one doesn’t understand the commercial, one has to admit that it is still pretty darn funny, albeit in a classical Seinfeld “funny about nothing” kind of way.
- In Apple commercials, you see Justin Long and John Hodgman make fun of each other. In Microsoft commercials, you get both arguably the most successful and funniest comedian in the 90’s as well as the richest man (and geek) in the world making fun of themselves. Talk about star power!
- And boy do they make fun of themselves. Seinfeld’s money quote: “I have so many cars, I get stuck in my own traffic.”
- Finally, if you do look deep enough, there actually is a message: Nowadays, PCs running Windows are so pervasive and ubiquitous around our daily lives, it’s almost too easy to forget that the folks at Microsoft are the ones who brought these indispensable tools to us.
For those of you who haven’t seen the commercials yet, here is Part 1:
And here is Part 2:
Gates (reading a bedtime story to a little boy): “The fact that a design uses inheritance and polymorphism doesn’t make it a good design…”
Little Boy: “Are there any monsters in this story?”
Gates: “Yes, but it’s OK. There is a firewall.”
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I admit that the ads are *somewhat* funny, but wasting money so is not wise. Everyone’s talking about how crappy Microsoft is, not how awesome they are. I admit I’m not a big fan of the Get a Mac commercials myself, but this is just absurd.
While I certainly agree that wasting money is not so wise, one has to really consider what Microsoft’s $300 million is really paying for.
It’s obvious that they are not selling anything through these commercials, so to me, the next logical reason for this phase of the ad campaign is simply to generate buzz and get people talking about the Microsoft brand again.
And as they say in marketing, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
Also, one more thing you have to remember - when you say that “Everyone is talking about how crappy Microsoft is”, who is the “Everyone” that you are talking about?
Apple fans? For sure.
The tech community in the Silicon Valley Echo Chamber? Perhaps most.
PR agencies and advertising guys? I would guess that they are at worse 50/50 on the fence on whether the ads were crappy or not.
But what about the most important demographic of all - the hundreds of millions of daily folk that sees this ad on the tube?
My guess is that they think it’s pretty cool to see the richest man in the world participating awkwardly in a funny skit with Seinfeld on TV.
Oh, and they will certainly remember the Microsoft brand and Windows logo too.
If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it - Albert Einstein
Hhm…
“Who’s bread I eat, who’s song I sing?” .
Microsoft seems to think the idea wasn’t that great:
http://valleywag.com/5051455/microsoft-to-announce-jerry-seinfeld-ads-cancelled-tomorrow
That’s unfortunate, because I personally still thought the commercials were entertaining.
Oh well… I guess certain companies just don’t get any slack and leeway when in comes to reaching out to the public in a new and creative way. I bet if Apple ran the exact same commercials, but substituted Gates with Jobs, people will somehow love it… just because it’s Apple.
How else do you explain all of the alleged “openness” and “interoperability” proponents singing praises of the iPhone, which is the biggest walled garden of all?