Gates and Seinfeld: An Ad about nothing?
Will Microsoft's Seinfeld-led marketing strategy actually work? Alex Kidman has his doubts.
Before you start reading this particular blog entry, make sure you've watched Microsoft's latest attempt at consumer spin, led by Jerry Seinfeld. Here's a YouTube Link.
Now, that's one weird ad. Before the campaign launched, it was being touted in some circles as Microsoft's answer to Apple's "Mac vs PC" ads, and a way to get back some consumer confidence in the Microsoft branding to boot.
With that in mind, I even jotted down some quick suggestions for how Microsoft can sell Vista over the Mac a week ago. But my ideas clearly weren't where Microsoft was thinking. Because, to borrow a Mac-ism, they were definitely "thinking different".
A couple of quick observations on the first advertisement to kick off:
I'm surprised that Microsoft went with the idea of a "moist, chewy" computer.
Not because it's a stupid idea (although it is), but simply because it's a lawsuit waiting to happen, especially in the litigation-happy United States Of America. Or, to quote from Weird Al Yankovic's "I'll Sue Ya"
"I sued Dell Computers
'Cause I took a bath with my laptop, now it doesn't work!"
Just wait long enough for those ads to gain mindshare in the US market, and I'm sure somebody in, say, Wetumpka, Alabama (it exists!) will take a nibble on their laptop, and be on the phone to their lawyers as soon as the oral bleeding subsides.
Gates isn't exactly Brad Pitt
I get why, in a branding exercise, they might use Bill Gates to push the Microsoft brand; while Steve Ballmer's been running the company for a while now, Gates is still the nerd-in-charge to the populace at large.
The problem I have with Gates is that he's not exactly Brad Pitt when it comes to filling the screen with confidence, or for that matter grabbing your attention. What are you trying to say about your brand when the face of it seems to be a semi-retired old man?
The obvious point of comparison -- and while I doubt they'd ever say it, it's clearly at least partly a reaction to the damage done to Microsoft broadly, and Vista specifically -- are Apple's "Mac vs PC" ads.
I'm not going to link to every single one on YouTube, but that's because there's too many to count, plus parodies. So far, the only Microsoft parody ad up on YouTube involves the hilarious idea of Bill Gates farting. Such timeless wit never goes out of style, does it?
Why Apple's Mac vs PC ads work
Anyway, go and watch a Mac Vs PC ad. There are lots of them now, and while again repetition can make the jokes less funny than they were beforehand -- and they're probably the geekiest ads ever to grace mainstream TV for any considerable period of time -- they do perform a central role of good advertising. They sell a product.
At the end of the ad, you're meant to think that hey, maybe buying a Mac would be a good idea, or at least a better one than a PC. It's emotive advertising; while Apple is careful not to outright lie in its ads (and it's been helped by Vista's rather awkward litany of problems) they're more conveying a feeling of the right way to go than selling individual features per se.
The Mac campaign's weakness - Justin Long
Now, I will admit that personally, Mac spokesactor Justin Long gets on my nerves. He's been deliberately pitched as a hipster, but he's also got a really smug, self-satisfied grin to him.
Long did the same thing in Die Hard 4.0, a film I watched the whole length of just to see him get killed. Mild spoiler here: He didn't die. I was devastated.
It's that same smugness that many Apple fanboys exude, and I find it really annoying. The Mac's a good platform, but that smugness doesn't serve to win people over to your way of thinking, and quite why Apple chose to use it as their marketing strategy eludes me, as it's essentially preaching to the smug choir.
I preferred the good old days, when all Apple needed to sell its computers was a singing frog.
How to sell tech - Sony PlayStation 3
I do get the idea behind a "brand" commercial. The best example in recent tech history of this kind of thing would be Sony, who spent an awful lot of money on some very unusual ads to sell the Playstation 3.
Along the way, Sony generated some of the strangest advertising ever designed to sit in your brain and fester away for years, only to emerge as a bed-wetting nightmare when you're ninety.
Then again, when you're ninety, bed-wetting may be par for the course. Somehow, though, I'm not sure that this approach sold that many additional systems.
Can Microsoft reinvent its image?
Microsoft can do good consumer-level advertising; while it annoyed the socks off me due to repetition, its advertising led campaign, selling Microsoft solutions as the way to educate your children - the one where all the characters shifted between being line drawings and students, which I annoyingly can't find on YouTube right now -- was, I think a decent campaign that made a good point and didn't hurt the brand along the way.
As a starting block to reinventing the company, and presumably shifting popular consensus away from Apple and to Microsoft, though, the new campaign has a long way to go.
What do you think? Does the Seinfeld ad change your perception of Microsoft in any significant way?
Other Blog Entries written by Alex Kidman:
Thoughts on this article? Add a comment below.
Comments: 1
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poglaTG
Sep 8, 2008 1:15 PM
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I have to admit, as soon as I heard Seinfeld was doing a Vista ad, I was acutally looking forward to watching it. When I saw it I was baffled to say the least. This is an ad for Vista how? It doesn't mention why I should upgrade, the nice features I think it was trying to hint at individuality, and how the first outing of Vista 'didn't fit' but now it does, but THE AD DOESN'T EVEN MENTION THE WORD VISTA!
A nice little in joke where Gate's id was the Mug shot taken of him when he was pulled over for running a stop sign in 1977, but other than that I have nothing to recomend this ad at all.
WTF microsoft? |