Daring Fireball on Microsoft’s latest rebranding campaign with Jerry Seinfeld – and their abrupt withdrawal after only two ads – says There’s Nothing There:
As entertainment, the spots are good. Both are well-shot, well-cut, well-acted works of cinema. And they’re a radical departure for Microsoft insofar as they completely dropped the meaningless corporate doublespeak that’s been the hallmark of their advertising for the last decade.
But they “worked” only insofar as they said nothing and dropped the pretense of saying something. The spots said nothing and reveled in the nothingness.
Just well-made nothing. A couple of million bucks just burned up in well-produced style.
After David saw the ads, he concluded ”I liked Microsoft better when they were assholes”
It’s hard to imagine that the once mighty 800-pound gorilla in the room has been reduced to a mere monkey. A monkey with a $230B market cap, but a monkey no less.
And Waffle decides the ads should have been run in the 80′s:
More than anything, though, the new ad seems to have that terrific vibe of “computers — ain’t they quite the thing?”. I’m suspecting this would have worked much better one or two decades ago. We already know.
Maybe this is just all a marketing miss-step, but I for one believe the problem is much deeper: Microsoft has lost their way. What made them successful is not what will keep them successful and they need a change. Unfortunately, however, they haven’t figured this out yet.
Tags: microsoft
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