New Microsoft Apple Attack Ads: Not Funny

New Microsoft Apple Attack Ads: Not Funny

(URL: )

By Steven Burke, ChannelWeb

1:40 PM EDT Fri. Sep. 19, 2008

Microsoft's phase two attack ad lampooning Apple's popular "I'm A PC" commercials -- minus comedian Jerry Seinfeld and Microsoft founder Bill Gates -- can be summed up with three words: "I'm Not Funny."

Apple's "I'm A PC " I'm A Mac" ads only serve to hammer home Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs marketing genius and Microsoft's marketing missteps.

Jobs is the Zeitgeist- always of the moment and the spirit of the times. He is the gale wind force behind the Apple ads. Those Apple ads are funny and on target. And they make you want to buy an Apple computer.

Gates and Seinfeld. Not of the moment. Worse. Not Funny. What is funny is how even when Microsoft tries so hard to be funny it fails miserably.

Microsoft ads -- like its strategy -- are defensive and self conscious. Apple's ads are offensive -- as in they make Windows look like a joke -- and unself conscious.

It's no mistake that Microsoft has decided to move to Phase 2 of its $300 million Vista ad campaign without Seinfeld and Gates. Microsoft realizes those ads missed the mark. The problem is the new ad is a bigger bust.

Microsoft would have been better off letting someone like Dane Cook rip on Apple in a free form rant. Cook may not have been able to blunt Apple's "I'm A PC " I'm A Mac" attack. But he certainly would have been a whole lot more entertaining then Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates.