UPDATE: This entire ad campaign has been taken off the air. Apparently the public reaction was so negative Microsoft had no choice but to pull the plug. Word to the wise: Bill Gates is about as exciting as the paper bag I just threw away. Don’t use him. Ever.
Genius or just bizarre?
The ad world is all a buzz about the new Microsoft Windows commercial featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. It’s a bit hokey, rather long, and, well, it just doesn’t make any sense. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Ad Age calls it “a classic Crispin Porter oddity” - Crispin Porter is the ad agency that created the commercial, and is known for its creativity and its ability to resurrect brands with such ads as the King character for Burger King, embracing the “tiny” for Mini Cooper, the “Truth” smoking campaign.
Microsoft had to bring out the big guns, as over the past two years it has been single-handedly rebranded by Apple in their “Mac vs. PC” ads. Says Rob Enderle, an advisory analyst for tech companies, in the profile on Fast Company, “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a major national campaign that disparages a competitor, and the competitor just sits back and takes it.”
Well Microsoft isn’t taking it any longer, and it has brought on ad icon, Alex Bogusky, the bigshot at Crispin Porter, to help fight back. But is it working? Well, you may not think so after watching the commercial. But if you didn’t understand, rest assured - nobody did. It’s a “teaser ad” - the first commercial in a larger campaign, often “designed mainly to attract attention, and [will be] followed by other ads that explain the true message of the marketing effort.”
I look forward for what’s to come. Especially if Jerry’s featured. Apparently Microsoft may reinvent cool. Says Andrew Keller, co-exec at CP, about the ads to come, “To try to be cool is to not be cool. To chase cool, you’re chasing something that already exists, which means you’re always going to be on the wrong side of it, you’ll always be following.”
