New Family - Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates


Recommended Posts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBWPf1BWtkw

I must admit, I am kind of liking this now :D

from All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com by Mary Jo FoleyIf you liked the first Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld ad for Microsoft, you?ll probably love the second. If you didn?t, there?s hope: A more Windows-centric one will air in a matter of days, according to Microsoft officials.

On September 11, ad No. 2 in the new Microsoft series aired on ?Big Brother? reality show on CBS. (Microsoft provided me with access to the ad early, under embargo, so I had a chance to see it before it debuted on prime-time TV.)

The good news about the second ad designed for Microsoft by agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky: It?s no less esoteric than the first ? but at least we now know the start of Microsoft?s campaign to rebrand and reposition Windows among consumers is ?about nothing.? So it doesn?t matter that there are no hidden clues or subliminal anti-Apple messages in the new, 90-second spot. You get to see Seinfeld clipping his toenails. Enough said.

The bad news about the ad: Like the first Seinfeld-Gates ad, which aired a week ago, the latest Microsoft consumer-focused ad does little, if anything, to endear Microsoft or Windows to consumers.

?Very shortly, we will move into another phase of the campaign that will be about Windows,? a Microsoft spokesman told me this evening. And ?Windows,? in this case, means desktop, laptop and mobile. ?We?re talking days,? not longer, the spokesman said.

Microsoft paid somewhere shy of $300 million to create a new marketing/ad campaign aimed at improving the company?s brand among consumers. Part of that money went for TV ads, and part went toward hiring 150-plus ?Windows gurus? to help retail customers better understand how Windows-branded products should and could work.

Microsoft is expected to use the new ad campaign to help it cement the message that Windows is ?without walls.? Exactly what that means and what form the messaging will take is still unknown. But Microsoft is trying to emphasize that Windows Vista, Windows Mobile and Windows Live are all part of the same family?.

Microsoft?s public line is that the new consumer ad campaign is doing what the company intended: Getting people talking (even if negatively) about Microsoft and Windows. Officials are touting that the first ad saw more than 3 million views on YouTube. I?m not quite so sure than any publicity is good publicity, in this case.

Seriously? This is what Microsoft is coming up with.

If you expect them to imitate apple and start badmouthing competition, I think you will be disappointed. I agree that this doesn't "sell" Vista but the campaign is not about Vista. It is about Windows (and Microsoft?) in general. I was left WTF after the first one but this makes me feel interested again.

And to me this is certainly better than recent crap coming out here

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Very fitting name since AI users have air where there brains should be.
    • Yes, it was amusing at the time because even then dbrand was well known for stealing the designs of products from other companies. That’s what they do.
    • Didn’t Dbrand once complain that Casetify was ripping off their designs a well? seems pretty bad of them to try and get around Valve’s copyright this way with that in mind.
    • Dbrand thought they could get away with this Steam Machine case, Valve disagreed by David Uzondu Image via Dbrand Dbrand has cancelled its highly anticipated Companion Cube enclosure for the Valve Steam Machine, which it teased back in November of last year with a concept render and sign-up page, because it did not ask Valve for permission first before manufacturing the case. According to Dbrand, it took the "backwards approach" of building the product first before asking for permission from the copyright holder. Seven months of work went into the project, requiring over a thousand engineering hours from the design team. Workers developed forty-four sets of injection molding tools, making a unique mold for each sub-component of the crate. When the Companion Cube went live on Monday last week, it, according to Dbrand, quickly became the second-fastest-selling product in the company's fifteen-year history, racking up orders for hundreds of thousands of units. Customers eagerly bought the $129.95 deluxe edition or the bare-bones $99.95 version, which the manufacturer cheekily branded as the "Poverty Cube". It was around this time that the legal eagles at Valve descended on the accessory maker with a formal demand. The developer pointed out that the iconic block design remains protected intellectual property from the game Portal, so unlicensed sales had to stop. Dbrand said that all its pleas to salvage the project with the Valve team, including proposals to run a properly licensed release under official terms "with their blessing", fell on deaf ears, so it had no choice but to obey and remove every trace of the product from the internet. If you bought the enclosure, the company said that banks will process your refund by the end of this week, but if it still hasn't arrived in your account by then, you should not hesitate to contact support. The Steam Machine itself is a high-performance console that Valve designed directly to bring PC gaming into the living room. It was announced on 12th November 2025 (the same day Dbrand announced the Cube) and runs on the Linux-based SteamOS, the same OS that powers the Steam Deck. As for the price, due to the shortage of memory and storage chips, the hardware cost landed much higher than people were expecting, starting at $1,049 for the 512 model (without a controller) or $1,128 with the new gamepad. The premium 2 TB model pushes those prices even higher, selling at $1,349 for the standalone console and hitting $1,428 if you want the bundle.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Rookie
      Almohandis went up a rank
      Rookie
    • Apprentice
      jahara21 went up a rank
      Apprentice
    • Reacting Well
      NovaEdgeX earned a badge
      Reacting Well
    • Week One Done
      NovaEdgeX earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Year In
      BA the Curmudgeon earned a badge
      One Year In
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      532
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      266
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      148
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      97
    5. 5
      macoman
      57
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!