As most of you I’m sure know by now, Microsoft has shelled out $300,000,000 to revitalize the company in the eyes of consumers. Their attempts have generally been panned by bloggers, twitterers, and journalists alike. In my opinion, though, they didn’t do as badly as bloggers, or even Microsoft, thought.

The purpose of this entire campaign is not to talk about Vista. It is to reposition Microsoft as a hip, modern, different company, not unlike the Think Different campaign Apple ran years ago. Almost all the people who trash the campaign ignore this key fact. Opal Tribble at Appletell writes the following.

It would have been great if Microsoft’s commercials showed us how the PC users used Vista to enhance their work. We didn’t see that. Or, how about telling us what outstanding features Microsoft Vista offers that clearly outperform Apple?

With these ads, Microsoft is not looking to do a direct copy of the Get A Mac ads, substituting Vista’s benefits for OS X’s. This was what so many people assumed when Microsoft announced the campaign. What Microsoft is aiming to do is lessen their appearance as a cash-hungry corporate giant, and to make themselves more human.

Their first step, the Mojave Experiment, was abysmal. I wrote for Appletell about the myriad of ways the whole campaign was incomprehensibly stupid:

What the Mojave Experiment is essentially trying to sell is this: If a few dozen computer-illiterate people, shown key points of Vista by a Windows expert on a computer and peripherals handpicked by Microsoft, using software chosen by Microsoft that works well under Vista, were told that it was a new version, thus creating a placebo effect, ended up liking Vista, then so should you. We don’t care that it took you two days to install; we don’t care that none of your printers work, though they did under XP. Stop whining. These people managed to like it, and you can too.

Through flawed logic and bad science, the campaign promoted an “our users are stupid and don’t know what they’re doing” feel.

Microsoft’s next step was to take Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates off the shelf, dust them off, and put them into their own commercials. While the Mojave campaign did directly address Vista and bombed, this ad series I feel did something right. While the whole blogosphere was wetting their pants over the fact that the ads “didn’t make sense” and “didn’t talk about Windows at all,” the ads were doing their work. They were funny. Not laugh out loud funny, but funny in a down to earth nonsense way, and that’s not a bad thing.

They positioned Microsoft as having a sense of humor, and to be willing to poke fun at themselves via Bill Gates. Unfortunately, the angry geeks won out in the loudness contest (by the way, I’d really like to see what regular consumers thought of the ads, and what their perception of Microsoft was before and after,) and this ad campaign was cancelled, with Microsoft saying it was all part of the plan, which was disproved when word of an unaired third ad hit the air. Meanwhile, these very ads were making Microsoft way more talked about than they had been in a long while.

Microsoft’s third and most recent step in this $300,000,000 fiasco is their “I’m a PC” ads. They begin with a John Hodgman (PC in the Get A Mac ads) lookalike saying “I’m a PC and I’ve been made into a stereotype.” This is followed by a montage of regular people and celebrities saying that they are PCs and explaining their differences. While I don’t feel these ads are as good as the Bill and Jerry ads, they do their job.

Tribble writes for Appletell:

Instead, after viewing the commercial, I now realize anyone can own a Microsoft computer, regardless of your race, gender, profession, political views, or country. Like we didn’t know that before? Why is Microsoft not telling us why we need Vista?

Yet another swing and miss at grasping the point. Do we really realize this? Chances are, when someone says Windows, the basic thought is cubicle worker in a collared shirt, tie and khaki pants doing boring word processing and calculations. Of course, once you think for a second, you know this not to be the case, but these ads are aimed at changing that first split second perspective on the PC and Windows. By showing real people all across the globe doing things ranging from mundane to exciting, and by sprinkling in celebrities (”Hey, I know him!”) these ads do a pretty good job at what they’re meant to do.

If only the blogosphere could figure that out.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 19th, 2008 at 3:31 pm and is filed under Apple and Tech, Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.