What the Hell?
The new commercial with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates is out. It is, to put it mildly, bizarrely unfunny. Watch:
Are you as mystified as I am? The commercial seems to have been written by Gates, not Seinfeld, it is so unfunny. I think the biggest line in the commercial is “they run tight.” Maybe worthy of a small chuckle, but not much more. There is the inside joke of the mug shot, but even that kinda fell flat. And I’m not the only one to think it’s not funny, but that’s hardly a surprise. And what does any of this have to do with Microsoft? Some people try to suss it out, but if they’re right, it’s so weirdly metaphorical as to require a literary critic to explain it.
Not to mention, this was supposed to be a campaign that fought back against Apple. Does it? Well, in it, Seinfeld & Gates are experts at discount shoe shopping. A hit at Apple’s prices being higher? If so, then it’s a bizarre slam, because–aside from being so indirect that most people would miss it–although Apple hardware is sometimes more expensive than equivalent PC hardware, and although Apple doesn’t make super-low-end, bargain-basement machines, neither does Microsoft. Microsoft makes software–and Microsoft’s software is more expensive than Apple’s. Windows is priced higher than Mac OS X, and Office is priced higher than iWork. So the price thing doesn’t work.
However, I am of the opinion that, even though it’s confusingly bad, Microsoft’s ad actually hits the nail on the head. Here’s why:
Apple’s “Hi, I’m a Mac” ads are perfect: short, simple, funny… and perfectly clear. You come away from the ads pleased, and understand very well the message that was conveyed, that Macs are better machines with better software, and that Windows is riddled with problems.
Microsoft’s new ad is the reverse: long (at 90 seconds), bloated, and unclear, leaving you shaking your head at what the hell Microsoft was thinking when they made it.
In other words, both commercials express perfectly how the respective products work, and what impressions users have after having used both of them.
So in that sense, the Microsoft ad makes perfect sense.
Just to add here, because it didn’t fit in the post, this is part of a $300 million campaign to fight back against Apple and make people believe that Microsoft has good software. So far, we have the “Mojave Project,” which was quickly exposed as a badly-designed marketing sham, and now the $10 million+ commercial that can’t even make one of America’s funniest comedians funny.
Again, quintessential Microsoft. Can’t wait to see what’s next.
You know what Microsoft should have done? Maybe instead of spending $300 million to convince people they make good software, they should have taken the money and hired some people to make good software.
But then again, on reflection, that criticism doesn’t make sense. Microsoft does spend a lot more than that trying to make good software. It’s just that, like this ad campaign, they do a really bad job of it.
It was so confusing I originally thought it was an ad for a new Jerry Seinfeld show. I didn’t know it was a Microsoft commercial until the logo at the end!
Oh my god! Say it isn’t so. Seinfeld’s no longer hip.
I have strong emotional attachment, okay, nostalgia, tied to Seinfeld. Even now, whenever I watch the show, it’s the mid 1990s all over again, Clinton is president, television is interesting and funny, I have a good paying job, money in the bank, a nice car, take nice vacations, and a healthy social life. And then… disaster struck.
I blame this on Gates. Seinfeld will, I hope, shake this off and find a new way to be funny.
A note on systems. I used to design systems, mostly manufacturing systems. We used to say that a well designed system is like plumbing or the electric. If it’s well designed and runs well, you don’t even know that it’s there. It’s boring. It’s not sexy.
This was especially discussed in the early 90s when I worked for a company that had gone whole hog OS/2 – based largely upon the fact that it was technologically superior product over windows. Back then a week wouldn’t go by when Windows would crash on you. OS/2 was multithreaded, multitasking software with real memory management. If an application crashed on you, the system itself stayed up, and managed to salvage your data. Our chief systems engineer made the remark that OS/2 was too much like plumbing, dull and boring and that because Windows was glitchy people found it more sexy. Maybe a better example is the difference between manual and auto transmission. Ones less involved and so also more boring. I suspect that Apple suffers a little bit from this phenomena. It functions so smoothly that it’s boring. The thing it has going for it, though, are the advanced applications and widgets and things like that that come with it.
I can’t afford a mac, but I’d love to have one, and I’d love to buy one for my parents to use too.
I liked this adv, since it shows two icons behaving in a regular way, kind of, at a shopping mall.