Microsoft announcement tomorrow: No more Seinfeld ads!
Remember those awful Microsoft ads with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates? Well, now you can forget them. Microsoft flacks are desperately dialing reporters to spin them about “phase two” of the ad campaign — a phase, due to be announced tomorrow, which will drop the aging comic altogether. Microsoft’s version of the story: Redmond had always planned to drop Seinfeld. The awkward reality: The ads only reminded us how out of touch with consumers Microsoft is — and that Bill Gates’s company has millions of dollars to waste on hiring a has-been funnyman to keep him company. Update: In a phone call, Waggener Edstrom flack Frank Shaw confirms that Microsoft is not going on with Seinfeld, and echoes his underlings’ spin that the move was planned. There is the “potential to do other things” with Seinfeld, which Shaw says is still “possible.” He adds: “People would have been happier if everyone loved the ads, but this was not unexpected.”
- from Valleywag
New Seinfeld Microsoft ad draws negative reviews online
No soup for Microsoft?
The software giant’s new ad starring Jerry Seinfeld has drawn largely negative reviews online after premiering Thursday night during NBC’s broadcast of the National Football League’s season kickoff game.
The ad was the start of a highly anticipated $300 million advertising campaign that Microsoft is launching in attempt to rebuff Apple’s popular TV commercials, which have portrayed Microsoft and PCs as uncool.
In the commercial — which can be found at Microsoft.com and on video sharing sites — Seinfeld is walking through a mall when he spots Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates at a “Shoe Circus” store. The comedian then helps Gates pick out a new pair of shoes while the jokes come quick: showering with clothes on, Gates being a “10,” platinum credit cards for a fictional shoe store.
It’s a zany ad that packs a lot of quirkiness into 90 seconds. With no direct mention of Microsoft or its operating system, Vista, the commercial concludes with the slogan: “The future, delicious.”
The ad was created by Crispin Porter & Bogusky — a firm with a reputation for oddness. Many technology and advertising blogs have turned to Seinfeld’s trademark comedy description — “nothing” — to describe the ad.
“Huh?” wrote Abbey Klaassen for Ad Age. “You could be forgiven for not knowing what the heck Microsoft’s new TV ad … was about.”
Dan Frommer, writing for the Silicon Alley Insider, pronounced the ad “not funny” and added that the mall shoe store setting “is not going to help Microsoft look any cooler.”
For the blog Techcrunch.com, Michael Arrington noted that the “tech and geek crowd is a little underwhelmed” by the ad, which he said is “a far cry from the brilliant Microsoft v. Mac ads.”
- from AP
