The “Zune Insider Blog,” from Cesar Menendez, a Microsoft employee working on Microsoft’s new music project, “Zune,” has posted five TV commercials for Zune that, in our opinion, further pave the way to Zune’s inevitable failure. These five spots all fail on many levels. They are boring, overly obtuse, try way too hard to be “with it,” and fail to inspire any feeling whatsoever of wanting or needing a Zune. These are not good ads. This is not a good advertising campaign. This whole Zune thing is shaping up to become quite the debacle. Zune is “MS Bob” for the 20 Aughts.
We asked our own SteveJack (16-year TV vet) to watch the ads and comment. SteveJack said, “Awful. Truly awful. Where do you want to squirt today?™ When will the rest of the world finally see that Microsoft is a failure masquerading as a success?”
As we’re fond of asking, “What’s brown and squirts?”
Picnic (90-second spot):
Battle (60-second spot):
Concert (30-second spot):
Dog Scratch (15-second spot):
Couple (15-second spot):
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “mango” for the heads up.]
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4 out of 5 stink. I hope MS paid a lot for them. I agree with ‘me’ abou the bringing an mp3 player to a concert….kinda stupid eh? I actually liked the dog one…perhaps it is because I love dogs…or perhaps it was because you don’t see a Zune in it.
These are absolutley horrible. Terrible marketing, and you can barely see the Zune brand at the end….
Most people will catch them out of the corner of their eye and say “hm – those new iPod ads aren’t so good, are they?”
The soundtrack of the first on ends with “I don’t care what kind of drugs you’re on.” Strange, but somehow appropriate.
After being a designer and art director of 20+ years, I can categorically confirm that these ads are absolute crap.
Do people actually hang out, hug and kiss while listening to music through earphones? Isn’t that kind of anti-social?
Assuming you are British, as I am, you do a great job of making us look like real tossers. Just listen to yourself and tone yourself down. Idiot.
More scatological references.
Reverse psychology, anyone?
A little off-topic (it’s just that these commericals were so… yaaawwnnn… boring), but has anyone noted that MS Windows Media Player 11 imports a person’s complete iTunes library (minus the DRM-protected audio) without even asking? A little over the top, I think.
Typical MS ads..
Have you ever seen a MS ad that didn’t include EVERYBODY?!?! MS tries to be inclusive by showing every stripe of person on the earth…and like today’s radio, ends up pleasing everybody for a small slice of time, but pleasing nobody for a long slice of time.
Same with MS stuff…. too many people… the gunshot approach, so it never makes a direct hit on anyone.
I work in the consumer marketing field–and I think these ads are truly awful.
A cringe-inducing level of awful.
Really? Uh, they seem like what somebody’s parents would think is cool. The equivalent of saying “groovy”.
I was very unimpressed with the few shots of people huddled around each pointing their Zunes at each other and craning their necks to see the playlists of the other Zunes. I don’t know how this shit-brick works (the brown looks just as shitty on video as in stills), but wouldn’t it make sense to be able to at least SEE the libraries of other Zunes on your Zune? That way, you could request someone to “squirt” you… Not sure if MS realizes this, but “social” and actually being face to face are not the same thing to the generation that they are presumably marketing to – virtual connection is more important (see, IM, txting, myspace, etc).
What’s with the dogs? I believe in focus groups, dogs came out as the target demographic.
Last, those earbuds are very 1983, but unfortunately lack any element of retro-cool. It’s like MS got a bunch of free airline earbuds and tacked on some aluminum. OOOH! How very XPS! I know, that’s Dell, but same design ethic.
What a waste of bandwidth!!!!
maybe George Bush would like “the social”, after all he does use “the Google”
p.s. re Picnic, first we see some dogs, then something brown appears…
Makes the iPod Ads look cold and antiseptic!
As an American, I thought your comments were hysterical.
They look a bit, well… forced, you know, kind of… vague.
To me it seems they were produced by people who have little or no understanding of the target audience.
They’re not quite sure what they want, so they shove as much irrelevant images at the potential buyer in the hope that something sticks.
They also remind me of the KFC adverts that run in the UK.
Totally US-centric (not that this is a bad thing, but they won’t travel well, not like the iPod adverts), so you’ll either run them overseas anyway and they won’t work (just like the KFC ads in the UK), or re-brand in other countries which is expensive, messy and badly focused.
It’s very obvious Microsoft are really trying, they just don’t get it.
A bad product, which has bad core technology, and advertising that’s trying its hardest to make the most of a meagre offering.
They’ll probably sell a few dozen.
“The soundtrack of the first on ends with “I don’t care what kind of drugs you’re on.” Strange, but somehow appropriate.”
What a catch. Kinda like Microsoft using “Start me up” by the Stones. They had to cut the “you make a grown man cry” out of the song.
Yea, guess you’d have to be on some kinda drugs to really like the Zune.
Yeah, all those ads for iPods are going to be blown away by an ad that ends with a dog sniffing his balls!
Oh, I’m soooooo scared! I give up! Bill Gates, you win!
NOT!
Bozos
Steve.
The Official Jim Verdict:
SHITE
Squirt that up ya backside Ballmer!
It looks like MS is trying to be the anti-ipod with these commercials. The iPod campaign is clean crisp and trendy while the Zune looks to be going for the holdouts of the grunge rock group from the 90s. So, I suppose I can see where they are going with it but they don’t show what they are trying to sell. If you watch the commercial and have no idea what the product it what was the point of MS spending the advertising dollars. These commercials are just really bad.
How long until some of our iPod lovers out there spoof the commercials? I can see the same music playing with people dressed the same having problems getting their Zunes to connect. Then another one with problems of getting the device to work properly with WMP 11. No doubt someone will be having fun with iMovie as soon as the Zunes come out and the problems start to appear.
I know I should wait for the product to be released before I pass judgment but given the track record for MS products I am not having a whole lot of faith in their ability to deliver quality.
Ahh…the ads aren’t that bad. I like the music in the first one, and the concert one has one of my fave bands Eagles of Death Metal (boys what are you doing in a MS commercial???!!!).
The thing is I don’t understand is exactly why you would carry a Zune to a social gathering. If you’re at a big party in the park you want speakers, if you’re at a rock show you want to hear the band, if you’re at a battle you want to hear the rappers. It’s social. You want to talk and interact not put on headphones and cut yourself off.
So I guess the ads are bad after all because they just confuse me.
(Dog… a man’s best friend – geddit?)
“You’re never alone with a Zune”
wow, those pretty much sucked
ALOT
Maybe all those people with their dogs hanging out at the park wait for the dog zunes to come out. I guess that is where the zune marketplace is.