Microsoft announced today that they’re pulling those horrible commercials with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. The spin out of Redmond is that it was just a tease for the real campaign, but columnist Adrian Kingsley-Hughes isn’t buying it:
“So the whole idea was to come out with two ads that featured Gates and Seinfeld, ads that were enthusiastically hated by most and then move on to phase 2? I doubt it. I can’t say that these ads weren’t funny, but rather than being ‘ha ha funny,’ they were more ‘What’s that funny smell?’ funny.”
Now Microsoft will commit another mistake by airing spots that parody the Apple “I’m a Mac. I’m a PC” commercials. When you’re #2, you can always play underdog and make fun of #1, but it never works in the reverse. You can’t parody a parody without looking silly yourself. Besides, the Apple spots have the wit that Microsoft has never indicated it can display.
There are more bugs in Microsoft’s advertising strategy than in version 1.0 of their operating systems.