“While acknowledging Microsoft is in a tough spot in trying to recast Windows after years of attacks from Apple, one ad executive said she is highly skeptical of Microsoft’s new approach,” Ina Fried reports for CNET.
“Microsoft’s latest ad, which starts running tonight, features a Microsoft employee who looks very much like the PC guy from the Apple ads, saying ‘I’m a PC and I’ve been made into a stereotype,'” Fried reports.
“‘Casting Microsoft as a victim still doesn’t work for me,’ said Kathy Sharpe, CEO of New York-based interactive ad firm Sharpe Partners. ‘They aren’t victims. Apple just is smarter about this sort of thing,'” Fried reports. “The PC guy in Microsoft’s ads, by the way, is Sean Siller, who has been with Microsoft since 2005 and works as a senior program manager for networking in the Windows Core Operating System Division.”
“Sharpe was also skeptical that Microsoft really intended to end the Seinfeld bit so abruptly. She said that if, as Microsoft said, it didn’t film more Seinfeld ads, it’s probably because the first ads tested poorly. Microsoft insists that the shift was always part of the plan and the initial ads were simply an “ice-breaker,'” Fried reports. “Whatever the case, Sharpe said the Seinfeld bits clearly missed their mark.”
More in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Avoman” for the heads up.]