Here’s Why I Thought the Microsoft Ad was Good

In case you haven’t heard, Microsoft recently started airing a commercial featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. The two are supposed to do a series of these commercials. These commercials had a good deal of hype surrounding them because they are supposed to combat the very popular Mac vs. PC ads run by Apple.

In case you missed it, here it is.

Now almost everything I’ve heard about this ad has been overly negative. Most people were just confused by the lack of any real advertising in it. The only products mentioned within the ad were for Churros and a brand of shoe called Conquistador. The Microsoft logo is only seen for a second after the ad has finished. From what I have been hearing/reading most people disliked the ad because it truly was an ad about nothing, although I might be reading too much into the ad, I saw a few metaphors in it.

Here’s why I think it worked.

I thought it was funny. The quirky humor and random tangents made me laugh. I don’t know why so many people are saying the ads are worthless because they didn’t advertise their product, when Budweiser has been making nothing but this style of ad for probably a decade. The Microsoft ad isn’t as funny or trendy as the Budweiser ads, but it seems to be in the same vein of marketing.

I like how it caught people off guard. Right after the commercials were announced to begin shooting, people began questioning and speculating about them. People questioned using Jerry Seinfeld, a man who most said reached his prime 10 years ago. Most visioned some sort of stand-up dialog with Seinfeld spouting off lines such as “What’s the deal with Vista” or “Have you ever noticed all those Mac people”. I like that the commercial was just random and unexpected.

Here’s the main reason why I think it worked, everyone is talking about it. The days after it aired I saw several blog’s post about it. Podcasts spend minutes analyzing and voicing their opinions. It hit the front page of Digg at least twice from what I’ve seen. Granted most of the attention it got was of the negative sort, but if you’re of the opinion that there’s no such thing as bad press, Microsoft did very well.

By generating so much talk about the commercial, more people have seen it. I’m assuming that these commercials will form some type of story when stringed together, so having a large number of people see the first one is important for the subsequent ones.

So that’s my take on it. I’m sure most will disagree, which is fine, but for all those bashing the commercial so much, how many of those will refuse to watch the second one? You might not like it, but you still want to see what happens next. Maybe I’m giving Microsoft too much credit for being a company that hasn’t had to compete through real marketing in over a decade credit for producing what I’m assuming will be a good run of commercials. Time will tell.

What’s your opinion of the current commercial and how the remaining ones will be?