New Microsoft commercial, featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Asher


What the **** is your point?

Word of mouth usually doesn't work. True it might work a little bit for a company like Apple, but advertising obviously benefits sales a great deal, even for Apple.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Kidicious
Word of mouth usually doesn't work. True it might work a little bit for a company like Apple, but advertising obviously benefits sales a great deal, even for Apple.

Because no one knew anything about the new iPod Nano before the ads were up!

"A little bit", please.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui




Because no one knew anything about the new iPod Nano before the ads were up!

"A little bit", please.

Sure some people knew about it. That doesn't mean they were going to buy one until they saw the commercials. Sure some would have, but not advertising would have been stupid.

The only companies that might not advertise are companies who don't want to see the view of their product diminish, but even those types of companies find ways to advertise these days.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Kidicious


Word of mouth usually doesn't work. True it might work a little bit for a company like Apple, but advertising obviously benefits sales a great deal, even for Apple.

Word of mouth is massive for Apple.

Secondly, I'm not talking about the effect of advertising in general. I know it works in general. I'm referring to the overall success of Apple's ads for the Mac.

[-Jrabbit]

Originally posted by Asher
As a side note, I thought the $10M payday for Seinfeld was a rumour? Does anyone have a real source for that?

This was widely reported around 8/21-22. Most authoritative source (quoted in most articles I read) was the Wall Street Journal. But I don't subscribe, so can't attribute it here. The Reuters version should be pretty accurate, though...

Microsoft enlists Seinfeld for ad campaign: source
Thu Aug 21, 2008 5:29pm EDT

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Comedian Jerry Seinfeld will star in a $300 million marketing campaign for Microsoft Corp aimed at burnishing the image of its computer operating system, a person familiar with the effort said on Thursday.

The centerpiece of that campaign, to debut next month, is a series of television advertisements in which Seinfeld, 54, best known for his eponymous NBC sitcom, will appear with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, the person told Reuters.

The Wall Street Journal, which first reported details of the marketing effort, said Seinfeld will receive about $10 million for his work.

Seinfeld's representatives were not immediately available for comment and Redmond, Washington-based computer software giant Microsoft declined to discuss the matter.

But the source who knew of the ad campaign said an immediate goal of the commercials is to counter public perceptions that Windows Vista, Microsoft's latest PC operating system, is clunky and hard to use compared with rival products from Apple Inc.

The overall objective of the campaign is to rejuvenate the brand image of Windows generally, the source said.

Devised by the Miami-based ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the spots will employ some variation of the slogan "Windows, Not Walls" and the theme of removing barriers that prevent people and ideas from connecting, the person said.

The ads will begin appearing September 4. The Wall Street Journal said the $300 million marketing campaign is one of the largest in the company's history.

For now, Seinfeld is the only celebrity, other than Gates, taking part in the campaign, although others were considered, including comic actor Will Ferrell, the source said.

The attempted image overhaul comes in the wake of Apple's "Mac vs. PC" ads featuring a geeky PC guy who vaguely resembles Gates being unable to keep up with a better-looking, hip Mac counterpart.

Those ads, painting Windows as stodgy and unreliable, have reinforced criticism about Vista's performance, stringent hardware requirements and lack of support for other software and devices such as printers.

Despite selling more than 180 million licenses since its launch in 2007, Vista continues to suffer from the perception the release was a dud, although Microsoft has said early problems with the operating system have been resolved.

The Windows operating system is the crown jewel of Microsoft's $60 billion software empire. It sits on more than 90 percent of the world's computers and profits generated from Windows bankroll the company's ventures into new businesses such as Xbox video game machines and Zune music players.

Lesser postings in dozens of sites and RSS aggregators...
pcmag.com
MSNBC.com
seattletimes.com
Gawker
Wired
etc.

[-Jrabbit]

The "For now..." quote I bolded seems to support the idea that there has already been a significant change in plans.

FWIW, Ferrell would have been a far hipper choice IMO.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Asher

Word of mouth is massive for Apple.

Secondly, I'm not talking about the effect of advertising in general. I know it works in general. I'm referring to the overall success of Apple's ads for the Mac.

And everyone except for you and your Mac-hater blog writers agree than they have been.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Why even listen to Aggie?

Because I was right. The $10 million dollar figure was widely reported.

And it seems funny that it was supposed to be for a whole campaign, and now they've ended up paying him $5 million dollars for each of two commercials. At his absolute peak of fame he was only getting about a million bucks for a 30 minute episode of Seinfeld.

$10 million for two commercials that were only shown for about a week? Come on...

It's extremely weird behaviour.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by -Jrabbit
The "For now..." quote I bolded seems to support the idea that there has already been a significant change in plans.

FWIW, Ferrell would have been a far hipper choice IMO.

Yeah, it's like Microsoft are aiming deliberately for fail.

People said that the first Gates/Seinfeld ad was meant to put a "human face" on the company, but from what I could see it succeeded in putting a "human ass" on the company.

They can do better. Why not just show their product? It looks OK, if you like that sort of thing.

[Sprayber]

I like YouTube

[Agathon]

This is a bit naff, but it is much better than the Seinfeld commercials and probably cost nowhere near as much

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Sprayber
I like YouTube

That just makes me want to play with a Playstation 3, cause I hate that blond girl.

[Agathon]

Now this is a cool commercial, because Wynton is cool.



And Dylan is cool



Compare this, which is full of stink and seems to say "setting cute wildlife on fire is a good idea"



Or this, which starts out awesome, but ends up like a morgue

[-Jrabbit]

Found the original Wall Street Journal article for you, Asher.

[Asher]

Agathon, your irrelevant spam to this thread is amusing. Clearly the MS commercials bothered you a lot.

I can see no reason why but to suggest perhaps they tempted you to not hate MS as much. And that threatened your core values. Thus this spastic trollfest of hyperbole and nonsense you've contributed to this thread?