Microsoft: Not That There's Anything Wrong With That

I could spend pages going on and on about Microsoft's dismal attempt to reboot its image with Jerry Seinfeld, but it kind of seems like piling on at this point. It's been said elsewhere and countless times already why this was a dubious idea at best. (For instance... Nothing says innovative and hip like an aging comedian who hasn't done anything funny in a decade. Oh, and on his show, he used a Mac.)

Still, I was hoping that the first ad with Seinfeld would be worth watching. Instead, I get this:



Microsoft certainly isn't the first company to put out an ad that has absolutely no mention of its products or services and instead focuses exclusively on brand identification and image, but they may be one of the worst at doing so. Watching this ad, I kept expecting it to turn out to be a commercial for something else: American Express, right? No, no, Discover. Wait, maybe a short film festival?

How disappointing to see that the ad's message boils down to nothing more than, "See? At Microsoft we can take a joke. We've got a sense of humor too! And we're making the future more playful. Like a Seinfeld episode. Remember Seinfeld? He was the most boring of those people on that sitcom back in the 90s with that god awful laughtrack and possibly the most disappointing finale ever. Still don't remember? It was the show with the guy who yelled the N word and talked about a hypothetical lynching of an African-American man in his audience at a comedy club? Exactly. At Microsoft, we're working to make the future just like that."

And yet, if one thinks of this ad less as an attempt to improve Microsoft's public image for consumers and instead see it as a projection of the company's self-image, then it all makes sense. Just like Seinfeld, Microsoft became hugely successful and then, in the late 90s and early 2000s, seemed to take a break. Just like Seinfeld, when Microsoft tried its old act again, it seemed hamhanded and awkward. Just like Seinfeld, Microsoft's recent failures and missteps don't seem to bother it all that much. (I don't use Vista, but perhaps someone out there can tell me if there's a way of extending this metaphor by likening Bee Movie to Microsoft's latest bloated operating system.)

It didn't have to be this way. Frankly, I would have laughed out loud and applauded if this ad had recreated a scene from Seinfeld's show... only with Bill Gates as the Soup Nazi, now transformed as the Software Nazi. Imagine Jerry walking into the restaurant, wanting to go from his Mac to a Windows machine, but the Software Nazi is unimpressed: "No software for you!" Bill's MS outfit would look suspiciously like an SS uniform. Elaine asks if maybe the next version of Internet Explorer would be kind enough not to use up all the memory and processing power in her 3 year-old laptop: "No software for you!" Bill is angry and we see brief glimpses of what looks like a bondage dungeon over his shoulder through a doorway off in the distance. Kramer comes in listening to a Zune, and the camera settles on Bill's face as his lips just barely twist into a smile under his phony Hitler mustache.

Now see, THAT is how you get people talking.