Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld ads canned
The Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld Microsoft ads will stop running as of today. I guess I was wrong.
Instead, Microsoft is running new ads featuring an actor who looks and dresses just like John Hodgman’s PC character, saying, “Hello, I’m a PC, and I’ve been made into a stereotype.”
Celebrity cameos continue (without Seinfeld), including Bill Gates, Eva Longoria and Deepak Chopra. More importantly, the ads feature real-world Windows users who are the antithesis of the Hodgman character. One user states “I’m a PC” (via a white board) while scuba diving inside a shark cage.
It aims to turn a perceived negative — “being” a PC — into a positive. That’s the specialty of Crispin Porter & Bogusky, the agency behind the ads. And that’s a switch that Microsoft must flip in consumers’ minds.
Apple has defined Microsoft for many with the “Get A Mac” ads, and now they’re trying to take their brand back by parading real customers in front of the camera. Windows users are not out-of-touch nerds who love their Excel spreadsheets as they do their own mother, they’re shark-diving scientists.
As for the “old” ads, Microsoft claims they intended to drop Jerry from the beginning, so we assume that Phase I, the Seinfeld ads, were meant to get people talking in preparation for Phase II. Still, they barely ran for two weeks and cost $10 million (Seinfeld’s take). That’s one hell of a conversation starter.
While better than the Seinfeld ads, the new ones have a schoolyard feel to me. I think of the kid who, after being called a nerd by his peers, can only reply with “AM NOT!”
September 21st, 2008 at 2:48 am
It aims to turn a perceived negative — “being” a PC — into a positive. That’s the specialty of Crispin Porter & Bogusky, the agency behind the ads. And that’s a switch that Microsoft must flip in consumers’ minds.
September 22nd, 2008 at 4:02 pm
I finally watched the Seinfeld ads this weekend. All I could think was WTF?