14 DAY TRIAL // It was revealed yesterday that Microsoft had allegedly ditched comedian Jerry Seinfeld in favor of another (more symbolic) character to be featured in its Windows Not Walls ad campaign. While there's still talk whether or not Seinfeld is coming back to tell Gates to “adjust his shorts”, Microsoft's third ad, and the first of a series dubbed “Real PC”, has aired - video available below.
Also revealed by a Computerworld piece is that “four of the images that Microsoft made available on its PressPass site [...] display the designation 'Adobe Photoshop C3 Macintosh' when their file properties are examined”. “The images appear to be frames from the television ads...”
In short, Microsoft's first “Real PC” ad was actually “made on a Mac”.
Speaking during the keynote address at Microsoft's annual Worldwide Partner Conference, Brad Brooks, Microsoft's VP of Windows Vista consumer marketing, disclosed the company's plans to counter Apple's "I'm a Mac" ads. The campaign was then called "Free the People" and referred to making computing solutions available for everyone, under any form. Proving it was dead serious about its counter-offensive towards Apple, the Redmond software giant hired famous comedian Jerry Seinfeld to be the image of its ad campaign dubbed (hear this) "Windows, Not Walls". Lately though, Microsoft had a change in priorities with the new ad campaign.
Admittedly, this new series of ads looks and sounds a lot more promising than Microsoft's first two “ice breaker”-ads featuring mogul Bill Gates and comedian Jerry Seinfeld. Still, no one is really sure whether or not Seinfeld is coming back to do more acting for Microsoft's ad campaign. The Redmond company says they're not ruling him out yet:
“So there seems to be the rumor running around that we're supposedly cancelling our Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld ads tomorrow,” said Christopher Flores, Director Windows Communications. “I wouldn't count on anything being 'cancelled',” he stated. “It was always the plan to have Jerry Seinfeld in the first phase of the campaign and not a part of every ad. Instead, our Windows Consumer Campaign is moving into the next phase and we did mention previously that you should expect the campaign to evolve,” Flores concluded.
Bill Veghte, Senior Vice President, Online Services & Windows Business Group, added that, with the new ad campaign kicking off, Microsoft is “enabling every PC user to upload their own I’m a PC spot”. Veghte explained that the company would publish the home-made materials and amplify them on the official Windows web site. “We’ll do better than that,” Veghte added. “We’ll publish some of those I’m a PC spots in places like digital billboards in Times Square.”
Now that's connecting to the crowd! Sounds promising, but we're not betting all our money on its success just yet, for two reasons: 1 - They were just as optimistic about the ads featuring Seinfeld; 2 - Apple is likely to answer back.
Any reasons you can think of why Microsoft's ad campaign won't / will sound off loud enough?