New Seinfeld Microsoft Ad...
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Comments (53)
Absolutely.
Problem A): People see MS as the "Evil Empire"
Solution: Reinvent Gates as accessible, human, even funny
Problem B): Bill's already reinvented himself as a serious philanthropist via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and it's Ballmer who now runs the show.
Solution: Who cares? People will come to like it anyway and associate the quirky genius with MS
These ads aren't for enterprise folks and experts but for the "regular" people who like the PC/Mac ads. If they can make Gates endearing then it makes Apple look mean (or at least snarky) for attacking them. Of course it's all fiction and has nothing to do with the quality of your computing experience, but what difference has that ever made?
Wha... Why??? WTF is this garbage? I don't understa... how stupid!!
Adverts for Coke are not aimed at making you drink coke. They are aimed at maintaining your awareness of coke.
People who don't understand advertising don't understand what the aim of advertising is to make you aware something exists.
Think of your brain as a google-esque search engine. Advertisers only very rarely try to make you want to buy something. The vast majority have the aim of pushing either their products and their brands into so that as you go about your life, their products pop up on your first page of search queries.
For example Coke want Coke to be the first brand I think off when I think of a brand to write about in my comment. Thats a win in their book.
While you are right that commercials try to establish band awareness, they also actually do try to sell you things believe it or not.
I'm sure your average person knows who Bill gates is, and everybody knows Jerry, but, do you think your average person knows the dorky face that goes with the name Gates? Probably not.
Not only does this commercial fail to set brand awareness about Vista, it fails to sell anything about it. The viewer knows nothing about either Vista or MS from this commercial. There is no creative value to the commercial either, it's just plain stupid. It isn't funny. It isn't informative. It isn't entertaining. It's stupid and it's boring. I don't think you can disagree with that.
If I saw only 30 seconds of that, I wouldn't know what was going on, other than that I had the hell confused out of my by MS from the logo at the end.
I realize the subtlety of the commercial. At the end, Jerry is telling Bill that he has connected the world, and allowed them to communicate, and is asking about things to come in the future. I get that. However, the average consumer doesn't want to have to think and analyze something to understand it. It needs to be in-your-face-obvious. People are used to being sold things.
This commercial is just retarded, and fails at it's intended purpose, be it trying to make people "aware" of Microsoft, or if they are trying to sell Vista.
Coke made an experiment in its hometown, Atlanta, a few decades ago. They thought that, since they were in Atlanta, and they were so damn big, they didn't have to advertise anymore. So they didn't. In three months, brand awareness, and sales, had gone down.
So, advertising designed to maintain awareness is very important, as Coke found back then...
Additionally, there's this issue of brand association. Most likely, you already associate Microsoft with certain ideas, perhaps with "office" and "useful" (if you are a Microsoft fan), perhaps with "expensive", or with "useless", or with "BSOD" and "incompatible". This ad is aimed to change your attitudes towards the brand.
If you relate to bill gates and find him personable and then associate bill gates with MS, then MS has succeeded.
Someone else pointed out that this campaign also tries to answer the Mac vs PC ads. Saying that Mac's are for pretentious people - Microsoft is for everyone. They really did take the very person that Mac guy makes fun of in every one of there commercials, and introduced him as likable. If MS succeeds they will have associated PC with the every man. And when the average guy watches the Mac vs PC ads, they will think that Mac is making fun of them. We will see if they accomplish that...
I don't want to see anymore of these crappy Microsoft ads. They're painful to watch. Should I be looking for the words "Think Different" hidden somewhere in these ads?
you watched it online (which cost the advertiser nothing) and associated it with the brand. you thought about it. you shared your thoughts with people online. you will likely do the same in real life tomorrow.
this ad is a wild success by almost any marketers measure.
For any long-time mac fans, does the PC = "Perpetually Connecting" ring any bells?
Pretty similar to another ad from a number of years ago :)
Imagine a Jeff Goldblum voice over:
"The PC. Perpetually complicated. Profusely corded. Physically conspicuous. Particularly costly. Oh, and then there's the new Mac. Which is about as un-PC as you can get."
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=hXRhsPNyssY
So this second ad is in answer to this old iMac Goldblum ad from a million years ago! It took them like a decade to think of a comeback - but they did it!
Haha, Microsoft must of missed this one!
these are actually funny in a non-hipster fanboy way.
Wow. Completely bizarre. Kind funny in a couple of spots. But completely bizarre.
it re-enforces a positive (if silly) brand image
I think it is cute.
Doesn't have anything on the Mac vs. PC ads though.
When I heard about the MS campaign I was hoping to see some bashing like the Mac ads, oh well.
I like it. It's nice to see an advertisement that's interesting and humorous instead of ramming a product down your throat, insulting your intelligence, or unfairly bashing a competitor.
I love apple computers, I own apple computers, and I think that apple computer has left itself WIDE open to a campaign like this and that there mac vs pc ads may end up backfiring.
Look at what Karl Rove et al are doing to Obama and what they did to Kerry. They played on the perception that they were presumptuous, arrogant, exclusive, superior - that they looked down on the everyman. And in case you have not noticed, it works. It worked in 2004, it seems to be working to great effect now. Apple and its Mac vs PC ads have positioned itself as somehow better, prettier, smarter, or more exclusive to the ugly PC guy. The balding guy. The fat guy. The old guy. The unattractive techie. The nerd.
Well, now Microsoft has answered that by making itself seem like the everyman computer, and they took the real life version of the character that apple bashes in their commercials, and introduced him to the viewer as a nice person. Basically, hey, PC guy is really ME. Apple is making fun of ME.
You know, I used Windows all my life until this year. I do think OS X is ultimately better in many ways, but I also have a Windows Vista machine. It doesn't deal well with wireless, is slow to start up, and I disabled the stupid security prompts. I'm tired of supporting my friends cries for help because of viruses, etc.
I look at the Mac vs. PC ads and laugh. They make some good points and note a change in consumer preference.
I look at this stuff and I get confused. The first one was funny. This was long, stupid, the robot was terrible, not funny, and a direct copy of the first ad. If this is a "sign" of things to come, I'm curious but have a negative feeling for Microsoft's ad efforts. I don't want to see another "give me a sign" ending. It's getting dumb.
I know some people are defending this as making Windows personal and for everyone, but this will not erase my bad experiences, and it will not make Vista better or cooler. Is microsoft targeting the older generation? Those who are switching to an easier experience on Mac? If so, what's the point? Given up on the young crowd Balmer? They're not making Windows cool, and if they think adults have the say in technology choices, they've been reading the wrong reports.
They would drop some shit on apple but they have nothing, thats why they came up with lame subliminal hype. They just want to create excitement over windows image like apple achieves with their secrecy.
i lul'd - hard. i don't own any pc's but i think these spots are more funny than the mac/pc ads apple has.
*shrug*
s ingle
h andely
o utwitting
w indows
m onkeys to
e njoy
a nd
s ing
i n
g lee of the
h orrible
n ausince (of vista)
Thats what show me a sign stands for. Ps i cant spell
hahaha, keep them coming! i'm loving these ads. they're such a crack up
WTF was that?
OK, I have been in advertising my whole carrier on both the client and agency side. I can't even image the pitch that the agency must have given Microsoft...let alone for the MS clowns to buy off on it! Who's dope are these guys smoking anyway? As a pilot of a new TV show, it's amusing...I'd watch the it...as a ad, For everyone out there...look through the pee hole before answering your door...the same goes for using Vista.
The ads don't need to be funny or make sense, they need to be weird enough to get people to watch them and portray Gates as likeable. Yeah, the ads make Seinfeld and Gates look like idiots, but that's preferable to the current opinion of Gates, it's a change for the better. They are obviously going for a viral type video with the weirdness.. it seems to be working, i mean, its posted up on a Mac fanboy site.
That was four and a half minutes of my life I could have spent doing something more productive. Heck, I could have spent it doing nothing, and it'd have been more productive than watching that.
Jerry's show was great in its day, but this just isn't working for me, really. The first one wasn't any more funny than this, but at least it was mercifully shorter. Taking something that's not consistently funny and making it three times longer is a bad idea.
Seinfeld fan here. Screw Gates, I just love the ads for my Seinfeld fix... that said Bill Gates is pretty funny in it.
That was a terrible ad, and a huge waste of time. Think of something else to spend millions of dollars on.
I LOVE THEM
come on stop looking for meanings. just enjoy them for what they are. i tink they are great