A Winner Out of the Gates

In Microsoft's newest ad, "Pride," people from all over the world speak into the camera saying, "I'm a PC," then describe their individual quirks. And with this simple, 60-second spot, Microsoft has given itself a strategy that makes sense in a piece of advertising I actually understand. And that's a good thing, because my head was about to implode from all the aggressive scratching required in watching the campaign's first ads. Talk about turning Bill Gates, the company founder, into a sideshow. I felt like staging an intervention. It seemed Microsoft wanted to apologize for bringing Gates into our homes, so they ponied up Jerry Seinfeld to smooth the way (and hijack the proceedings).In the first Bill & Jerry spot from Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the word "Microsoft" is uttered only once, as if it's "Voldemort." It happens when the duo is leaving the mall and Seinfeld says to his pal, "I imagine over the years you've mind-melded your magnum Jupiter brain to those other Saturn ring brains at Microsoft." It's as if the two are grade-school friends and Seinfeld is a "bad" influence. Gates stands by, deadpan, eager to please, doing everything Seinfeld tells him to do, including gyrating his rear end. (And that's one wriggle in time we'll never get back.)I couldn't fathom why the coolest, and sometimes smartest, ad agency on the planet needed to "tease'' us with something so unattractive looking and infuriatingly off point. And the second spot, in which they move in with a regular (aesthetically stunted) middle-class family to get "in touch" with common folk was equally painful to watch. Funny only in a suffocatingly Little Miss Sunshine kind of way, it, too, seemed disconnected from any discernible strategy. That is, until the very end, when the two are pulling their luggage down the block. "You've connected over a billion people,'' Seinfeld says to Gates. "What's next, the animal kingdom?"Yadda yadda. But the next step in the campaign actually does show different "kingdoms" connecting -- the animal, the human and the superstar. It finally responds to the Apple portrayal, which managed to define Microsoft as it floundered to define itself. Part of the brilliance of the Apple ads is that they divide the world into black and white. But what we're really dealing with in terms of Mac and PC is more like, um, apples and oranges. Apple is one continuous, cohesive brand of hardware and software revered by its users (sometimes to a scary degree). By contrast, PC is a conglomeration of different brands that house Microsoft products (some of which the Redmond, Wash.-based behemoth doesn't particularly want to be associated with). In addition, the new tagline is "Windows. Life without walls," because Windows does not want to get pigeonholed on the PC. As this new campaign will show, the company is pushing a whole universe of mobile, Internet, TV, gaming and computer-communications operating systems and devices.A literal response to Apple's "I'm a Mac" would be "I'm a Vista," and I didn't hear the word "Vista" in the new spot, although Microsoft maintains that many of the bugs have been corrected.Anyway, just repeating the actual lines from "Pride'' would make it sound duller and more obvious than it is. The fun is in the edits and pacing. The spot shows everyone from Jeff Green of the Discovery Channel with a polar bear and a diver with a great white shark gnawing at her cage to glasses-wearing kids in Africa acknowledging their PC-ness. (I'm not crazy about the use of celebrities in general, but the singer/producer Pharrell Williams really works here, although Deepak Chopra seems to be parodying himself.)The opening cut features an actual Microsoft engineer, in jacket and tie, who looks uncannily like John Hodgman. Standing in an all-white space, he explains he's no caricature. The final cut is inclusive, democratic and hilarious, as some French guy says, "I'm a PC and I sell fees." (He means "fish.") This is the way to go -- to show the uniqueness of each of its users. The breadth and depth of PC users worldwide (almost 1 billion) is conveyed in a way that's charming and doesn't obviously attack Apple for being elitist -- although the subtext is there. Eventually, users will be able to upload their thoughts to lifewithoutwalls.com, and their content could be used in ads on many platforms.One good thing to come out of the Seinfeld work: In the public's mind, this could result in an image reversal for Gates and Apple's Steve Jobs, in which Jobs becomes the secretive control freak while Gates is out doing his philanthropic work.I can't wait to see how Apple responds. Let the games begin!

Brand Marketing

A Winner Out of the Gates

Barbara Lippert

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Barbara Lippert