Driving home the idea of simplicity

Nov 27, 2009 07:58 GMT  ·  By

Windows 7 RTM has been leveraged for anything from a kitchen utensil to a Christmas accessory, but it appears that the latest iteration of the Windows client is also the perfect tool for world domination. Feast your eyes on the videos embedded at the bottom of this article and you’re bound to understand the role that Windows 7 can play into taking over the world. And, believe it or not, this time around it’s not the Redmond software behemoth pulling the strings of a Machiavellian strategy designed to enslave the planet. In fact, the “danger” comes from the last place you’d expect, something as apparently inoffensive as a cartoon character of a baby.

Fact is that Microsoft has set up to drive home the idea of simplicity as the core concept associated with the Windows 7 RTM marketing efforts. Following the failed Windows Vista Wow, with its most recent release of Windows, the Redmond company aimed its message at a consumer common denominator, promising simplicity across the board. In fact, the “Windows 7 is so simple that” is the central theme to all video advertisements that Microsoft produced in concert with Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. Albeit, after watching the Family Guy Windows commercials, the simplicity leitmotif does manage to come off as a bit of brainwashing, simply because of the repetitive nature of the message.

Microsoft and FOX One were flirting in October with the idea of a Windows 7-exclusive Family Guy special. At that time Microsoft announced that Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex’s Almost Live Comedy Show was designed to be an exclusive Windows 7-brand sponsorship experience scheduled to air Sunday, November 8, on FOX. Obviously, November 8 has since then come and gone and the Family Guy episode did not feature Windows 7.

This because the Redmond company found unhealthy the branding association between Windows 7 and Family Guy. Fans of the show already know that MacFarlane has never managed to keep away from associating Family Guy humor with rather unorthodox themes including Nazism, anti-Semitism, people with disabilities, deviant behavior, etc. The software giant decided that the Windows 7 brand could not be associated with borderline politically incorrect Family Guy content, a move which must be applauded for Microsoft, as the company and the OS would have been undoubtedly picked apart by Apple fanboys, the last people to still mistake Buy a Mac ads for comedy.