So I am talking to a co-worker the other day and he says to me “Have you seen the new Microsoft ad with Jerry Seinfeld?”

I quickly Google it and watch Jerry Seinfeld help Bill Gates buy discount shoes while eating churros and rambling on about nothing. It ends with Bill Gates adjusting his shorts and a tag line that says “The Future. Delicious.”

Let me first point out that I am a very big Seinfeld fan and have watched every episode of the television series more then once, but when it came to this commercial, I was completely dumbfounded. I immediately looked into the other news about the ad to find that Microsoft was paying Mr. Seinfeld 10 million dollars to do this and spending $300 million on a campaign to improve their image because Apple has been portraying them as drab, dull and unimaginative.¹

Coincidentally, I was also reading an article on www.psychotactics.com and this phrase jumped out at me “If you don’t have a benefit for the customer, just being different is going to get you nowhere.” This was a phrase that summed up all my feelings for this commercial. It was an ad about nothing and it was wasting my time. To be honest, I was insulted as a consumer and enraged as a marketer! How many marketers have 300 million to work with when developing a campaign or program? Was this really the best they could do for the money?

Microsoft’s objective was to make them seem more hip and fun to shake the image that the Apple ads have created for them. Let’s talk frankly about Microsoft and their image. They are the majority, the ones with a monopoly and the bar in which all technology is judged against. Their software is often full of bugs and is released to the public often with full knowledge that it isn’t perfect.

Apple’s ad campaign is built on “We are reliable and easy and PC isn’t”. The fun and hip aspects are byproducts and secondary. Microsoft is saying “We can pay someone to say we are fun and hip too” but they are not addressing the actual issue which is they are unreliable and require more tech savvy to operate.

If they really want to change their brand image, an ad campaign about “nothing and Bill Gates adjusting his shorts” isn’t going to do it.

Watch the ad here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM_72QXCtN4&feature=related

¹Wall Street Journal - Microsoft Enlists Jerry Seinfeld In Its Ad Battle Against Apple:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121928939429159525.html?mod=hpp_us_whats_news