The Channel Wire

September 18, 2008

The $300 million Microsoft ad campaign featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld, who I've dubbed Gatesfeld, has been partially axed. Viewers were subject to six shoe-filled, churro-munching, curio-stealing and often strange minutes of Gatesfeld trying to reconnect with normal people.

Seinfeld—who allegedly is making $10 million from the campaign—has made his last appearance in the ad campaign, although Bill Gates may still appear in a few of the commercials in the future, Valleywag reported.

The next set of Microsoft ads will carry on the "Windows. Life without walls" theme that has been the message characterizing the ads to this point, The New York Times reports. In addition, the Crispin Porter & Bogusky ad-agency-helmed TV spots will respond directly to Apple's Mac vs. PC commercials that have been so successful in reinvigorating the Apple brand.

Microsoft's response comes in the form of a John Hodgman doppelganger. Hodgman, of course, is the abused, slightly nerdy looking guy who plays PC in Apple's marketing campaign. An honest-to-goodness Microsoft engineer who bears a remarkable resemblance to Hodgman is set to grace the tube as a direct response to those ads and embrace being a PC.

Microsoft's own PC guy will introduce himself to the nation by saying, "Hello, I'm a PC, and I've been made into a stereotype," The New York Times reports.

Everyone knows stereotypes are bad. So take that, Apple.

The rest of Microsoft's ad campaign will go on to feature more than 60 real-life Microsoft employees, other celebrities such as Eva Longoria, author Deepak Chopra and hip-hop singer Pharrell Williams. Gates will also return to the campaign at some point, presumably to shake his money maker some more and continue preaching the new Microsoft message.

Whether or not that message will still include chewy computers, giant mothership-type houses hovering over Seattle and the robot remains to be seen. But the smart money is that it's unlikely.