Microsoft ditches Seinfeld and grabs a page from Apple
By Chris Gaylord | 09.18.08
Microsoft will air its new ad campaign tonight on NBC’s “The Office,” according to CNET.
Jerry Seinfeld is out. The new star is Sean Siller, a Microsoft employee who looks surprisingly like John Hodgman, the “I’m a PC” guy from Apple’s successful ad campaign.
The resemblance is no coincidence.
“I’m a PC, and I’ve been made into a stereotype,” says Mr. Siller, followed by a montage of PC pals including actress Eva Longoria, a scuba diver, and Mr. Windows himself, Bill Gates.
The new ad ends the short-lived Jerry Seinfeld series. General consensus called those two TV spots somewhat random and rambling.
But will this new tactic – which basically says Windows is a victim – persuade shoppers to stick with Vista? We’ll see after the ad premiers tonight, but the forecast is gloomy.
Apple has become an increasing threat to PC makers. On Sunday, Change Wave posted its monthly consumer-tastes index (an unscientific but decent reading of personal tech preferences). Respondents who had planned to buy a new computer in the next 90 days said they were eyeing Apple laptops and desktops more than any other brand. The Mac numbers were at a record high for Change Wave – 34 percent of those in the market for laptops favored Apple (up 2 points), compared with 28 percent for Dell and 20 percent for HP.
[Via CNET]
<< Video games start to shape classroom curriculum | MainComments
2. Michael Teuber | 09.18.08
How is it possible that after paying Seinfeld $10 million that Microsoft should place that campaign on ‘hiatus’ and adopt a strategy of possibly entering into a conversation with a much smaller competitor?
3. What’s the frequency, Kenneth? | 09.18.08
Windows is a victim? The victims are the people who had Windows foisted on them and didn’t know any better.
4. Don Mitchell | 09.18.08
Microsoft has a lot of detractors and there’s a lot of disinformation out htere. In the mid 1990s, Windows NT and Windows 95 were both great systems in their own ways. Being in the academic computer science/UNIX world, I was delighted to see how much more powerful and advanced (than UNIX) NT was. Windows 95 was aimed at the consumer, giving games and apps more rope, changing fast to keep up with all the things that were happening in the computer world then, but inevitably not as stable as NT.
Ten years later, I’m hoping Microsoft will continue to do good work, but I’m not happy by what I see with Vista. Microsoft has compromised its successful internal culture. It used to be a system of checks and balances among developers, testers and program managers (the latter being an advocate for the user). Now program manager burocrats run the show, and test divisions have replace good old fashion sleuthing with automated scripting.
It would be great to see a truly new OS. For now we are stuck with Windows. Or we can run the even older technology of UNIX, marketed to us by amateurish open source vendors as “revolutionary”. Pffft.
5. Warren | 09.18.08
Message to Don.
I think you missed the point of the article.
“Change Wave – 34 percent of those in the market for laptops favored Apple (up 2 points), compared with 28 percent for Dell and 20 percent for HP.”
That 34 percent are looking to buy Unix machines … not from an amateurish open source vendor, but from a company that has simply out executed Microsoft in the OS space for nearly three years.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
Leave a Comment
We do not publish all comments, and we do not publish comments immediately. The comments feature is a forum to discuss the ideas in our stories. Constructive debate - even pointed disagreement - is welcome, but personal attacks on other commenters are not, and will not be published.
Tip: Do not write a novel. Keep it short. We will not publish lengthy comments. Come up with your own statements. This is not a place to cut and paste an email you received. If we recognize it as such, we won't post it.
Please do not post any comments that are commercial in nature or that violate copyrights.
Finally, we will not publish any comments that we regard as obscene, defamatory, or intended to incite violence.
1. Peter | 09.18.08
Being a programmer who works in IT, I can empathize with Mr. Gates. It’s not easy to build an operating system that has all the applications, programs and ideas that Microsoft has taken integrated into a workable mess. We have to feel sorry for a company that comes out with fixes for mistakes that they made when they wrote the first OS, and are now packaging as new software that we need to pay for.
Maybe if Microsoft took a break and stopped trying to flash things up they could come out with an OS that we could all adopt. We want an OS!! Leave all the bells and whistles, I’ll buy them from someone who knows what they are doing. I think I would rather pay more for the extras if I want them.
Another thing Microsoft needs to stop dabbling in Copyright. Stop trying to protect everyone’s copyrighted music and movies. That is there job. I don’t want my computer telling me that the CD I am trying to play is pirated, I copied it myself so I could use it without worrying about damage, it’s called FAIR USE.
If Microsoft would keep the OS an OS and stop trying to integrate things their OS would be a tool and not treat us like we were one.