Apparently I was not the only one who was confused by Microsoft’s Gates and Seinfeld team-up — Microsoft has decided to pull the ads due to the fact that they were “poorly received“. According to Mich Matthews, a Microsoft senior vice president of marketing:
“We wanted to be sure that when we do come out with our (new) major message, ‘Life Without Walls,’ more people would be paying attention than they would otherwise,” contends Mathews. “My goodness, did we do that.”
You sure did, Mich. While Microsoft did at first focus on the improvements it had made to Windows Vista, it has now not only gotten Seinfeld and Gates talking nonsense — it’s also tried the old bait-and-switch approach to Vista marketing.
While I can’t argue that the latter approach is an innovative way to market their new operating system, why not just come up with a slogan like ‘Windows Vista: really, it’s not that bad.’ Maybe Microsoft should have stuck to their guns and just kept touting Vista’s improvements?
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September 20th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Yea I have to admit I didnt really get those ads at all :S
September 21st, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Obviously you weren’t alone Tom.
October 20th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
[...] done my share of complaining, however, about the Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld team-up that went so horribly wrong — but it [...]
March 3rd, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Those ads were the strangest things ever. Bill or Jerry only mentioned Windows maybe once during the ads. For the shoe ad, I had no idea what they were doing the whole time. I kept thinking they are wasting time, get to the ad. The ads where they were living with another family was even stranger. Jerry must have thought that they weren’t making an ad but instead were making fun of advertising at Microsoft’s cost.