Vista Nazi?
When I heard that Microsoft has hired Jerry Seinfeld to do some Vista commercials, I didn’t quite know what to think. I mean, how exactly does Seinfeld relate to Microsoft’s core product? This is the guy who had a TV show about “nothing” with episodes talking about the “Soup Nazi”. Don’t get me wrong; I loved Seinfeld. [Don't get me started on talking about the dangers of chip double-dipping.] Granted, they may create some pretty funny commercials and it’ll all be in good fun. But does Microsoft really think they’ll be able to capture the same magic that is inherent in many of the “I’m a Mac” commercials?
Last month, Microsoft posted a website about a project called The “Mojave Experiment”, where they duped a bunch of people into thinking they were looking at a new version of Windows code named Mojave when they were really just looking at Vista all along. The problem with how they marketed The “Mojave Experiment” is that it’s just so blood subjective.
Some of the people who participated didn’t seem all that genuine, nor did they seem like the kind of candidates that most people would care about. Most of them just seemed…well…generic. I mean, which of them were business professionals, college students, power users, and/or information workers? When it comes to Windows users, those are the people you should be concerned about. Granted, your average home user is greatly important, but it’s the movers and shakers in the industry that you should be even more worried about because they’re the ones who recommend solutions to your average user. It just would have been nice to know who these people are and why a solution like Vista is so important to them.
Also, from the very beginning, you hear everyone talking about their initial perceptions of Vista, how they think it’s bad. So right from the get-go you’re hearing negative, negative, negative before you get to anything positive. That’s just bad editing and bad execution. It would have been much better to have heard some positives before talking about bad perceptions. People’s attention spans are small so you have to get to the point relatively quickly.
Another problem with this sort of campaign is that it’s a uphill battle. It’s like the Pepsi Challenge of Windows with Vista on one side and…uh…Vista on the other. Rather than focusing on how to make their own product better they’d rather spend their time and money on trying to get people think that Vista is better than what they think. The thing is though is that, although some of the issues surrounding Vista are just perceived issues, a lot of them aren’t and I think Microsoft knows it. Thus the reason for the Pepsi Challenge to begin with.
And with Seinfeld on board, Microsoft will spend an estimated $300 million dollars their ad campaign to reinvigorate the public perception of Windows Vista, $10 million of which will go to Seinfeld. As Ryan Tate of Gawker pointed out:
Yes, because if there’s one surefire way to convince everyone Vista is cool, cutting edge and not liable to get frazzled by life’s minor complications, it’s hiring a 1990s sitcom star and professional kvetcher! Who, um, very visibly owned a series of Macs on his show.
Yep, rather than spending the $300 million on developing a better product, Microsoft would rather spend it on having a comedian tell you absolutely nothing about a product that you already know enough about in the first place. Microsoft isn’t just battling perception issues with Vista, they’re also battling perception issues with themselves.
September 21st, 2008 at 10:35 pm
[...] while back, I talked a bit about Microsoft’s efforts to boost their image through a series of upcoming ads featuring Jerry Seinfeld. Well, they [...]