New Vista advertisement debuts and flops
As expected, the new Windows Vista commercial with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates debuted on Sept 4th as part of Microsoft’s $300 million advertising campaign to restore Vista’s public perception problem. A perception problem that has mushroomed into everybody and their brother pouring hate upon Vista without ever having used it and one that persists despite Vista users relatively positive experience with the OS. Will this new commercial do what “The Mojave Experiment” advertisements failed to do? Umm, No. Sorry Microsoft but you have to do better than two old guys talking about shoes. Seinfeld’s whole “show about nothing” comedic approach is just so “90’s” and doesn’t carry over well to a commercial about computers. Suffice it say, Gates & Seinfeld are no Hodgman & Long. Apple can rest easy.
Tags: Bill Gates, Commercial, Jerry Seinfeld, microsoft, Windows Vista
Great commercial. It is the first of many as part of an ad campaign. Technical people are not going to be swayed by it but I think the masses will enjoy. I wonder if Shoe Carnival liked it… haha.
Yes. I think Vista is a fantastic OS.
/I like MS. Not an Apple fan. I like Linux.
//Enjoy the Apple commercials though…
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@ chris]
Chris - I have both Macs and PCs. And Vista sucks. I had no problems with XP - I am not a Microsoft hater, and I think Office 2007 is outstanding. But Vista is slower than XP and broke several useful, expensive, and not at all old programs on my computer (Quickbooks Pro 2006, for instance).
The truly unfortunate misperception is that the only people who don’t like Vista are those who have not used it. Or that those who don’t like it are exclusively Mac users. The simple fact is, lots of people with no negative leanings toward MS software use Vista every day and are unhappy with it, for sound reasons. For most of us, it has nothing to do with Mac vs. PC sentiments. XP just worked better and faster for me. Vista adds nothing useful for me but takes away a lot of functionality I had before - like Acrobat 6 Professional.
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ugh when I heard jerry gripe about an os for celebreties one word LAME
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@Kelly:
Obviously, the comedic technique of deconstruction eludes you. This is actually a spoof on Apple, turned inside out.
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Ugh:
Their != there != they’re
your != you’re
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This isn’t what the fanboys have been waiting for. We’ve been waiting for attacks. We want blood. We want unfair comparisons. We want to prove we aren’t inferior. We DON’T want shoes.
Amazing how the Xbox team can do such a great job with their marketing, and Windows, the company’s flagship product can do so poorly.
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^ XBox team only has to appeal to kids (or those who think like them). Marketing an OS is a _completely_ different animal. Besides, this was only a soft-sell introductory ad for the campaign. Just the fact that people are talking about it, pro or con, is all the effectiveness MS needs to satisfy them for now. It’s quite clever of MS to use L/R-thinking to keep the viewer slightly off-balance compared to the simplistic linear logic of Apple’s ads.
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@backbeat
comedic what? us simple folk just don’t get it I guess.
I actually like the apple ads and their simplicity..after thinking hard about so many other things during the day, I want my entertainment to entertain me without effort. I don’t want to have to think about it, I simply want it to make me smile,laugh, etc. The Microsoft ad, meh. The Apple ads, funny. imho.
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I thought it was funny and appreciated it’s “weird-ness” but it did nothing for my impressions of Microsoft or Windows. In fact, all it did was mildly entertain me for 27 seconds.
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This ad was absolutely a waste of time and money. The only reason I knew it was an Ad for Vista was becasue the logo popped up at the end. If you want to fix the perception of the product, talk about the product, get creative.
I didn’t know whether this was an advertisement for shoes or those lame pretzels they were eating during the commercial. At least when HP used Seinfeld in their campaigns you knew exactly what they were advertising.
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@Kelly:
Comedic deconstruction is just the method of making fun of and showing the silliness that makes up ‘humor’ by spoofing traditional ‘comedy’ itself. Think of it as a joke within a joke about the comedy trade itself. Jack Black, Adam Sandler, Will Farrell, Jerry Seinfeld, and many others are great practioners. Nothing fancy or complicated really.
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I thought it was awesome.
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An Ad About Nothing
Great, an ad about “nothing” just like Seinfeld’s series. And without a laugh track you’re forced to witness just how un-funny Seinfeld is, especially in this, and presumably future ads. Doesn’t help M$ a bit and I’ll give it a week before the Apple ads make fun of this too. This is so sad and pathetic. And WTH is Bill Gates doing in it anyway ?! He’s retired and gone. It’s Balmer’s puppy to run now.
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You’d think that MS would have been creative…for example:
Jerry is in his apartment using his ‘MAC’ and down it goes. He calls support and they tell him to bring it to a ‘genius’, and within’ seconds he hears a knock on his door and it’s Bill Gates (’genius’). Bill tells him all the pros about Vista over a MAC (more software options, hardware options, etc.) and recommends that Jerry buys one from George Costanza or Llyod Braun (you’d need to be familiar with the show and the episode when they sold computers out of the garage). George shows up moments later at the cafe with a brand new Vista laptop while Bill and Jerry are having coffee and Elaine is hitting on Bill, asking him how much money he really has and how long he’s going to be in NY.
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Did I really say “practioners”??
How about practitioners, for the win?
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@ dondgc
I see your point of view, but don’t agree with it. If progress is to be made in computing and OS’s, you cant always be backward compatable. If someones 1996 printer, or hell, your 2006 printer wont work with Vista, who’s fault is it? The OS or the device Mfg? We cannot hold on to old devices and software and expect them to work forever on future OS’s. You state that Acrobat 6 does not work properly with Vista, maybe Adobe should bear the brunt of your anger, not MS, as Adobe should have made an upgrade for 6.
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What’s the message? “Vista is hard, let’s go shopping!”
I toldja, they shoulda gone with a tried and tested comedic genius. http://tinyurl.com/5c3r6y
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@backbeat
thanks for the explanation..
that type of humor must be lost on me because of all the comedians you mention, the only one I find funny is Jerry Seinfeld..the others have moments that are amusing but overall they don’t do anything for me. Maybe that is why I find the ad to be not funny..
either way, though, you right about MS. they are probably happy with all the chatter about the ad and the inevitable discussion about Vista that will ensue
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an ad about nothing with a ms logo at the end.. nice..
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why is a man thats worth $50 billion dollars actually at a discount store?
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I wonder how much better they could have made Vista by spending another 300 million on R&D. I’m a Microsoft beleiver, but that was dumb.
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APPLE anyone?
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Umm… it seems to have been somewhat successful — sure it didn’t make sense, but all of a sudden all of “us” are talking about it… free advertising every time another post is written about it. My guess is that they were attempting to make a viral video — and they’ve come darn close.
I hate it — and that’s probably exactly what they wanted
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I liked the commercial.
It wasn’t as bad as the Apple commercials where you have some cheesy 20-something wearing a hoodie from old navy and jeans that don’t fit, acting all smug about his mac. It’s the same bad feeling I get from Apple Store employees.
AND I OWN 4 MACs!
And the iPod commercials with the dancing sillouhettes wearing high heeled shoes slinging their hair around. BLAH!!!
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the commercial wasn’t for YOU GUYS. THe commercial was for your average non-technical person.
See, as tech heads we immediately thought “Oh wait, here is that new M$ commercial that we’ve been hearing about, let’s watch intently and judge afterwards”
Then there is their intended audience… My wife saw the commercial and chuckled afterwards. I saw her watch it and asked what she thought. She said “that was cute..” and then went about her business.
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