“Remember those awful Microsoft ads with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates? Well, now you can forget them,” Owen Thomas reports for Valleywag.
“Microsoft flacks are desperately dialing reporters to spin them about ‘phase two’ of the ad campaign — a phase, due to be announced tomorrow, which will drop the aging comic altogether,” Thomas reports.
“Microsoft’s version of the story: Redmond had always planned to drop Seinfeld. The awkward reality: The ads only reminded us how out of touch with consumers Microsoft is,” Thomas reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers too numerous to mention for the heads up.]
In Redmond, “phase two” must follow “number two.”
We can almost hear this pre-launch conversation:
See, we did the Burger King ads, so we know everything. So, what we’ll do is run a couple of indecipherable pieces of crap that are designed to drastically lower expectations.
Yeah, use Jerry as a decoy; pay him big money. Jerry loves cash even more than his Macs; he’ll do anything for it.
So, anyway, then, when it sucks, we “cancel” the whole thing, so when we start running the regular Windows Vista campaign ads, everyone will think the things are as effing brilliant as, uh, Apple’s ads. Or something like that. Whatever. Microsoft’s paying us dump trucks full of cash which means that, after this all blows over, we can buy even more Macs and iPhones for the agency!