Thursday, August 21st 2008
Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates to Promote Windows Vista
Not very long ago, Microsoft had announced a humongous allocation of funds (covered here) for a large-scale promotion campaign aimed to uplift their Windows Vista OS from lukewarm market reception. "The Mojave Experiment" (read here) that soon followed was part and parcel of the campaign. Meanwhile things looked better for Apple and in turn the propagation of its operating system. A major part of the campaign is covered at a non-public stratum, meaning that they don't involve public commercials, announcements, advertisements, etc., since they are aimed to promote enterprise siblings of Windows Vista and involve events directed towards small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
The most recent development in terms of public-marketing from Microsoft comes in the form of the software giant taking off from where the Mojave Experiment left, by signing up comedian, former TV star Jerry Seinfeld for US $10M to feature in commercials promoting Vista. Microsoft explains the concept as "Windows, Not Walls," which involves "break[ing] down barriers that prevent people and ideas from connecting."
Joining Jerry would be Bill Gates who has had sufficient "work experience" with starring in TV commercials, of the many in which he starred along with Steve Ballmer. We could soon see Gates star with Seinfeld in doing "anti-Apple" advertisements retaliatory to those "PC vs. Mac guy" ads. Microsoft will begin firing its marketing artillery against Apple starting September 4 in an effort to derail Apple's campaign to create of Mac computers as being cool and Vista PCs being failures.
Sources:
AppScout, TG Daily
The most recent development in terms of public-marketing from Microsoft comes in the form of the software giant taking off from where the Mojave Experiment left, by signing up comedian, former TV star Jerry Seinfeld for US $10M to feature in commercials promoting Vista. Microsoft explains the concept as "Windows, Not Walls," which involves "break[ing] down barriers that prevent people and ideas from connecting."
Joining Jerry would be Bill Gates who has had sufficient "work experience" with starring in TV commercials, of the many in which he starred along with Steve Ballmer. We could soon see Gates star with Seinfeld in doing "anti-Apple" advertisements retaliatory to those "PC vs. Mac guy" ads. Microsoft will begin firing its marketing artillery against Apple starting September 4 in an effort to derail Apple's campaign to create of Mac computers as being cool and Vista PCs being failures.
30 Comments on Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates to Promote Windows Vista
I still have a few issues but I can play my games and what not (granted after a bit of tweaking and a bit of swearing! :p )
PC: "Playing Half-Life 2, this is my gravity gun."
Mac: "Well I can sort of do that."
PC: "Technically Mac, you have to become me first."
Look, when someone plants the seed of doubt, and then lets it grow without a care in the world (blames balmer), the plant will begin to grow very large. In other words, the seed has grown for far too long.
Example:
A game gets crappy scores from almost every critic. Sales suffer tremendously. About 2 years later they release a patch that fixes everything. However, still the sales still don't live up to the potential because the "seed" has already been planted.
I'm not saying the above example is what happened with Vista. However, in my opinion the best defense is a good offense...And Microsoft did nothing while Apple has continued to gobble up their market.
Apple computers are now sitting at 4.2% market share, after the back to school thing. While that doesn't seem very significant. I'll put it this way...Apple doubled their COMPUTER market shares in ONE SUMMER ALONE. (that's out of all of the computer market)
In conclusion, this is too little too late.
Nice one From_Nowhere. I hope you dont mind if I add it to my sig.
blast you chewy! i was about to do that!
Mac's have started to come up here.
I can't agree more. Its just funny how true it is.
We rarely(never) see windows vista commercials in australia lol.
Perhaps they should do a commercial with Elaine saying something to Jerry like, "Microsoft is sponge-worthy, Mac is not". :laugh:
I still watch the re-runs even though I've seen them a million times! Obviously with this ad campaign coming out, I'm not alone!:)