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See if you can figure out the first Bill Gates + Jerry Seinfeld Microsoft ad (with video)

Friday, September 5, 2008 · 8:24 am · 245 Comments

YouTuber “Zenophobius” has posted the first Bill Gates + Jerry Seinfeld commercial, “Shoe Circus.”

Direct link via YouTube here.

[Attribution: Gizmodo. Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers "ChrissyOne" and "RadDoc" for the heads up.]

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Comment Feed

245 Comments

« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 … 13 Next »

cookie

Friday, September 5, 2008 - 9:22 am · Reply

we all need to change shoes once in a while ?
jjjj

Friday, September 5, 2008 - 9:23 am · Reply

FAIL.
Forrest, Forrest Gump

Friday, September 5, 2008 - 9:24 am · Reply

Let’s see. BG is in a cheap store buying cheap shoes that doesn’t fit. JS help him and advice to untight them by fold several times and to shower the shoes so they can fit (though when they get dry they became ugly, stinky and disasemble) and then, BG is proud he belongs to the Clown Club (Is he the president there or what?).
Very windoze! Never works out of the box.
You have to fold the computer several times, shower it, wait it to dry and then…
Discard it!

Stupid is as stupid does.
BigmacX

Friday, September 5, 2008 - 9:27 am · Reply

Totally Clueless and pointless!
critic

Friday, September 5, 2008 - 9:28 am · Reply

WTF

The only thing that could possibly describe this ad.
shen

Friday, September 5, 2008 - 9:30 am · Reply

“Jerry, just stop. I don’t know when it happened, but you have to face it – you’re just not funny any more. It’s true. But don’t let it get you down. It happens to the best of us.”

any more? when was he funny?

the great part about this ad is that the next time someone says “apple needs to do better ads, they need to show blah blah blabbity blah blah etc….” you can just hit them over the head with this until they submit!
Randian

Friday, September 5, 2008 - 9:34 am · Reply

For those of us still using our Cubes . . . resistance was futile. We were (and remain) happily assimilated.
JRA

Friday, September 5, 2008 - 9:34 am · Reply

Lets see, they are comparing Windows Vista, an allegedly lower cost alternative to the never mentioned OS X to shopping at an annoying discount shoe retailer. Anyone ever been in a Shoe Carnival.

The only truth here is that Windows Vista and Shoe Carnival are equally annoying.
shen

Friday, September 5, 2008 - 9:35 am · Reply

remember all the comments about “why not use the 300 million to improve windows?”

if you think this ad is a better investment than paying your software developers to do better work, what does that say about the quality of your software team?
Grifterus

Friday, September 5, 2008 - 9:36 am · Reply

OK, watching that makes me more stupid by the minute….

I swear my intelligence hurts at this point.

And I’m not the brightest guy….
ChrissyOne

Friday, September 5, 2008 - 9:37 am · Reply

@ Cubert

Yes. And PSE and PRE and PS.com/express. It’s been grueling.

-c
Chip

Friday, September 5, 2008 - 9:38 am · Reply

I think the whole “shoe circus” idea is archetypal Microsoft. I guess it’s supposed to represent the Apple Stores, but like all of Microsoft’s attempts at originality it is a concept that doesn’t quite make sense; like it could almost mean something, but is just a bit shy of coherence. You can kind of understand what they’re getting at, but not quite. Much in the same way that their operating systems almost work, or the Zune almost had some useful ideas that maybe could’ve developed into something. Maybe….

And also in keeping with the Microsoft way, they have taken a broken concept, a damaged idea from the very beginning, and put it in the framework of “borrowed” material from Apple. Here they’ve tried to mimic the context of clever and insightful parody of the Get a Mac ads, but with a stale, had-his-day-in-the-sun-long-ago comedian (Seinfeld) in place of one (Hodgman) who is relevant to today. And the result is something more complicated than it is funny, effective or useful. Or put another way, it produces the pure, Grade A, Microsoft shit that we have come to expect.
Paul

Friday, September 5, 2008 - 9:39 am · Reply

It’s pretty spot on. Perfect, right on the money. Way to go Bill and Jerry.

I mean, their software is confusing so they made an ad that reflected that, right?

Hmmm ‘Bill and Jerry’. Maybe they should sell icecream instead.
Next Step.....

Friday, September 5, 2008 - 9:39 am · Reply

The next in this series will be Jerry Seinfeld seeing Bill Gates in a public restroom taking a dump.

Jerry will take the stall next to Bill.

It will, hopefully, leave the viewer with the feeling that “everything will come out alright”.
Sheep Register

Friday, September 5, 2008 - 9:40 am · Reply

There’s an old marketing saw that goes like this: Half of all advertising dollars are wasted. You just don’t know which half.

Well, I think now we know.
Chris

Friday, September 5, 2008 - 9:43 am · Reply

Yeah, what he said… OMG WTF!!!!!
Destrier

Friday, September 5, 2008 - 9:43 am · Reply

How ridiculous is that?
TowerTone

Friday, September 5, 2008 - 9:45 am · Reply

Big Top Points!!!
I don’t care what they are selling, it was funny to me.
Switched

Friday, September 5, 2008 - 9:47 am · Reply

You get ads like these when you have a product that you want to avoid talking about.
Predrag

Friday, September 5, 2008 - 9:48 am · Reply

I have a feeling they’re gunning for a 40+ commercials, and this is just the pilot (remember, it is from th guys who brought you the show about nothing!). This particular one has no story. It makes no argument. What it does is, establishes the characters, makes audience familiar with them, as well as their relationship, and sets the stage for further plot twists. The dominant theme is comedy (“Give me a signal… adjust your shorts… oh, I knew it!!”). The catch phrase at the end is “The future… Delicious… Windows”. It’s very subliminal (so much so that pretty much nobody saw its purpose), but over time, it may work. Keep in mind, MS is trying to dig itself out of a deep hole dug by more than 50 “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” commercials over two years. It’s a colossal challenge and they are going about it very slowly.

Let’s save our final judgement until we see at least five of these.