Microsoft To Announce Jerry Seinfeld Ads Cancelled

An anonymous reader writes "Valleywag says the Jerry Seinfeld ads are over — In a phone call, Frank Shaw confirms that Microsoft is not going on with Seinfeld, and echoes his underlings' spin that the move was planned. There is the 'potential to do other things' with Seinfeld, which Shaw says is still 'possible.' He adds: 'People would have been happier if everyone loved the ads, but this was not unexpected.'"

Comments

Penny Arcade called it

[QuantumG]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/9/15/

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[KGIII]

One can only hope we've gotten smarter, we Americans, since the Seinfeld era... Some of his shows were good and his standup was brilliant but really the majority of shows seemed to be the most retarded things on television at the time. It was sort of like how I've never seen a single episode of Friends and yet, while the show was running, I knew everything that was going on because of the commercials.

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[Anonymous Coward]

They fucked up, now if I were in charge Bill would have been facing off against the Soup Nazi. Then they could have introduced Ballmer as Bill's heavy. "Ballmer want soup! You give Ballmer soup! Oook ook." Ballmer slowly swivels his head to look semi-intelligently at Jerry and Bill, "Seinfeld want soup! Mr developer guy, he want soup too, you give us soup!"

The Soup Nazi yells "Next!" Ballmer picks up a chair ... (well you knew it was coming).

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[Goldberg's Pants]

Glad the ads are dead. There's "cool" surreal. (See: Rutger Hauer Guinness commercials in the late 80's and early 90's) Then there is utterly retarded. That was these.

I never got "Seinfeld" either. I saw a few episodes and it was okay I guess, but I never understood why it became so huge as it wasn't that funny. "No soup for you." Indeed.

Give me "Larry Sanders" any day over that.

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[Daengbo]

That's because the first few seasons were his comedy routine written into skits. Really. If you watched his stand-up before the show aired, nothing in the first season was new at all.

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[Lumpy]

What blows my mind is the following statement...

"People would have been happier if everyone loved the ads, but this was not unexpected."

I worked as IT for a major marketing company making and selling TV ad's so I got to see lots of stuff as well as listen in on a lot of conversations and learn the "biz" so to speak...

What blows my mind is what raging idiot at Microsoft green lighted this ad campaign? they KNEW that it was a flop from the above statement. yet they still spend the outrageous cash to have written and shoot and print those horrid commercials? Holy crap do they also wallpaper the walls at Microsoft with 100 bills just before they repaint them so they can figure out how to waste money even faster?

Those commercials had to have cost at LEAST $200,000 each without airtime. just production costs. If you used actors it would have went faster but I guarantee they had to re shoot several times and be on the set for 2 or more days to shoot each 30 second spot because of Bill being a non actor.

Hey Microsoft want a advertising campaign that will make everyone love vista? Give the Vista Home edition away to EVERYONE. make it free as a downloadable ISO without support on your website and overnight everyone will love you.

Why is it so hard for those morons at microsoft management to figure this out?

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[cayenne8]

"Glad the ads are dead. There's "cool" surreal. (See: Rutger Hauer Guinness commercials [youtube.com] in the late 80's and early 90's) Then there is utterly retarded. That was these."

And the thing is....someone, probably multiple people in a committee...actually thought these commercials were a GOOD idea!! I mean, even a company with the assets MS has doesn't just throw millions of dollars around on ads without a lot of people approving this.

Was there not a single, normal person that saw these say said...WTF?

Someone in charge of marketing at MS really needs to be encouraged to find greener pastures at another company over this one....

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[nabsltd]

For God's sake, there is even an episode where George is pretending to be a Whale Biologist to get a woman and when they are wandering the beach they happen to come across a beached whale!

It's called "exaggeration".

The joke is an absurd extenstion of a guy pretending to be a doctor/movie producer/interested in Russian poetry/etc. to impress a girl and getting caught at it.

Although later seasons did become a bit tedious, seasons 3-5 were probably the best non-sketch comedy show at its prime, with season 4 being close to perfect. The show probably jumped the shark in season 6, when it did a 100th episode clip show.

I liked Seinfeld, but these commercials aren't even close to a bad episode, and I'm surprised they made it to TV.

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[Twyst3d]

One can only hope we've gotten smarter, we Americans, since the Seinfeld era... Some of his shows were good and his standup was brilliant but really the majority of shows seemed to be the most retarded things on television at the time. It was sort of like how I've never seen a single episode of Friends and yet, while the show was running, I knew everything that was going on because of the commercials.

I think you missed the point of the retardedness. Point was they were poking fun at everyday life. If you couldnt see that you should probably ask yourself who in fact is the retard here?

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[Fozzyuw]

I've never got the Seinfeld thing. [...]

I'd have to say, don't bother. His show was based off his stand-up. Simply put, it's comedy by observation. He see's something odd and then mentions it. For example, He see's sky divers wearing helmets and asks: "What's the point? Is a helmet going to save your life when falling out of the sky? Really?" Then he turns that into an even funnier (by some people's tastes) simple comment. It's sort of a "funny because it's true" scenario.

Most of the TV show was based off this premise then expanded by the writing crew. Perhaps something you might find more interesting is not Jerry Seinfeld's comedy but how incredibly tough the guy has it and how he's become the victim of his own success. There's a great documentary showing this called Comedian. You see Jerry get up on stage just after the end of his series and people laugh at every stupid thing he says (even when it's not a joke). Then you see him sweat bullets as he totally fails at remembering any of his jokes and the crowd just gets sort of shocked.

The documentary is a little dull (particularly considering when it's about comedians) but there are some pretty true parts in it.

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[Kabuthunk]

Perhaps Microsoft should stop hiring yes-men for those committees :P.

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[sammy baby]

What blows my mind is what raging idiot at Microsoft green lighted this ad campaign? they KNEW that it was a flop from the above statement. yet they still spend the outrageous cash to have written and shoot and print those horrid commercials?

I can think of two possibilities.

1. They're lying when they said this was expected. That's the "oh, you poor dumb saps" explanation.
2. Someone at their ad agency thought it would be a great idea, and by the time anyone realized what a train wreck it was going to be, it had gathered too much steam to stop. By the time they released it, probably most of the people involved thought, "well... look on the bright side! It might not suck too bad! It might even be 'so bad it's good'!"

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[mhall119]

And the thing is....someone, probably multiple people in a committee...actually thought these commercials were a GOOD idea!!

Probably the same committee that thought Vista was a good idea.

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[MeBot]

Hey Microsoft want a advertising campaign that will make everyone love vista? Give the Vista Home edition away to EVERYONE. make it free as a downloadable ISO without support on your website and overnight everyone will love you.

What percentage of people in the world do you think even know what a downloadable ISO is? It seems that most people who know what it is and would know how to use it are the same people who probably grabbed a pirated version online already anyway. And then complained that they don't like it.

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[Pippinjack]

That's a great idea, I'm with you...

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[wcrowe]

And the thing is....someone, probably multiple people in a committee...actually thought these commercials were a GOOD idea!!

Actually I imagine the truth was simpler than that. There was probably a boardroom of people who were each unwilling to admit that they didn't understand these very esoteric ads. Each one outwardly proclaimed them "brilliant", while inwardly they had no idea what was going on. Nobody was willing to point out that the emperor had no clothes.

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[Darundal]

I really didn't see any relation between the ads and Seinfeld's show, except for the physical presence of Seinfeld. The entire thing felt to me more like an attempt at duplicating the (supposed) comedy of Napoleon Dynamite

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[camperdave]

Perhaps Microsoft should stop hiring yes-men for those committees

Yes, Sir! Stop hiring yes-men for commercial committees. Yes, sir. Consider it done, sir.

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[Number6.2]

Kinda makes you wish the CEO's of the world would take the Evil Overlord Checklist to heart, especially the part of having all plans spot checked by a 5 year old child.

BILL: Timmy, is this funny?

TIMMY: This sucks! Can I watch Power Rangers now?

BILL: Sure, Timmy. Alice, get me Mr. Seinfeld's agent on the phone...

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[Aphoxema]

I strangely suspect that all the bright minds in charge of advertising at MS have AS.

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[jdcope]

Thats how it works. Bill Cosby, Ray Romano, George Lopez...their shows were based on their standup too.

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[camperdave]

The helmet is to protect your head when the chute *DOES* open properly, but you make a bad landing; ie. coming in too hot, crashing through trees, or against a building, or when the wind catches your chute and drags you along the ground.

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[Aphoxema]

3. New Slurm didn't work out so well so we'll market old Slurm as Slurm Classic and we'll make billions!

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[Aphoxema]

They fucked up, now if I were in charge Bill would have been facing off against the Soup Nazi. Then they could have introduced Ballmer as Bill's heavy. "Ballmer want soup! You give Ballmer soup! Oook ook." Ballmer slowly swivels his head to look semi-intelligently at Jerry and Bill, "Seinfeld want soup! Mr developer guy, he want soup too, you give us soup!"

The Soup Nazi yells "Next!" Ballmer picks up a chair ... (well you knew it was coming).

Shit, I'm already getting my wallet to go pick up a copy of Office 2007 now...

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[CWRUisTakingMyMoney]

what raging idiot at Microsoft green lighted this ad campaign?

DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[nizo]

..what raging idiot at Microsoft green lighted this ad campaign..

Probably the same person who decided lyrics containing, "you'd make a grown man cryyyyy" would be a good theme song for their product. At least it was truth in advertising, I'll give them that.

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[badboy_tw2002]

See, that's why Sienfeld was never funny - they should have followed the patented slashdot humor method:

1. State joke
2. Repeat joke 4 million times
3. ???
4. Funny!

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[caluml]

That's not funny.

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[Hoi Polloi]

Actually a lot of the early writing was also coming from Larry David. Watch "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and you'll see a lot of plot devices taken straight out of Seinfeld.

Later on much of the writing was influenced by Larry Charles. Must be a "Larry" thing.

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[The Gaytriot]

I watched both commercials online so I could see the full thing and I liked them.
But the second commercial was over four minutes long, and it made me wonder how they would cut it down for a 30 second or even 1 minute ad.
When I did see it on T.V. later I just thought wtf is this?

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[Hoi Polloi]

Let me take a guess, you don't like "Jewish" style humor in general, e.g. comedians like (early) Woody Allen, Gary Shandling, and Larry David? Much of the show was based on picking at social awkwardness and standards of behavior. The Office (especially the BBC original) takes it even further with the violation of codes of conduct taken to painful levels. Common themes were people lying and having to then keep that lie alive, obsessive thoughts and behavior, and being caught in petty selfish acts.

I found the acting, especially from Julia Dryfuss, to be great. Her body language was instinctive. George's neuroses were great and his parents were perfect foils for him. Michael Richards could be hit or miss. Sometimes I felt he was overacting but usually he was very good in a slapstick, cartoonish way. Jerry was, of course, the straight man but he also indulged in a well done theme of pretty selfishness.

The writing was also excellent with multiple plot threads all being tried together in clever, unexpected ways at the last second. The show's frequent use of established standup comedians (Sarah Silverman, Brian Posehn, Larry Miller, etc) as character actors was also an excellent move.

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[ahoehn]

I donno. I sort of found the ads delightful. And I'm absolutely certain that's the first time I've been able to call a Microsoft offering delightful.

Maybe there's been so much of a "backlash" on the blogosphere that other equally delighted nerds have been reluctant to speak out, but I thought they were great ads. Microsoft has gazallions of dollars, and if more of those dollars were spent producing delightful things, we might begin to loathe them less.

On a related note, as someone who works in advertising - these commercials feel much more like the result of a creative director gone wild than some CEO at Microsoft. Maybe an effort to counter the wildly popular Mac ads. They failed to realize that the key ingredient was Jon Hodgman.

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[ghjm]

Consider:

1. The ads are just plain freaky. It's hard to imagine any focus group reaction other than possible mild laughter and "WTF?" which means that middle managers would be too scared for their jobs to approve them. The approval for these ads had to come from a top executive.

2. The message is oddly mixed regarding Microsoft itself. The idea is that there's some new stuff on the horizon that will solve all the problems the current stuff has. Why pay to advertise that your current stuff has problems?

3. Bill Gates is prominently featured throughout--the ads focus most of their attention on him. From the 70s drivers license photo to the Conquistadors to reading the story about programming, it's all about showing us who Gates is (or wants to be).

4. If I remember correctly, the word "Microsoft" does not appear - either spoken or as text - anywhere in the ad. The only reference to Microsoft is the Windows logo.

So: The purpose of these ads is to rehabilitate Bill Gates' image as he exits Microsoft and starts his new career as a philanthropist. The middle managers responsible for marketing and communications probably argued against it because it goes against any possible message they might want to convey. But Bill Gates gets what he wants.

These same middle managers are then put on the spot to answer questions about the thing. "This reaction was not unexpected" means "we knew it sucked but we were overruled." And "People would have been happier if everyone loved the ads" means "Gates now realizes it was a mistake and blames us, even though we told him so."

Plausible?

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[Free the Cowards]

What's sad is when certain fans attribute a completely natural difference in taste to some kind of defect.

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[WNight]

DX10 is just a transparent sham to force people to upgrade to Vista. It's been ported to XP successfully, something Microsoft claimed was impossible.

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Thats how comedy works. If anyone isnt familiar with the process... a comedian spends time from the start trying to get a good 5 minutes of solid jokes... then from there they work to 15 good minutes... and then to a half hour.... then to an hour. They build up a library of good, successful humor. They work through trial and error as they work clubs, noting what works what doesnt.

A comic doesnt just get a TV show. A comic's half our of material is reviewed by a producer, perhaps from the tonight show, or a network show. If the comedian doesnt have enough material, the producers generally say "i like what you're doing, your style, character... your jokes but you need a good solid hour. When you get a good solid hour... We might have a spot for you on the tonight show"

Of course no one gets an hour on the tonight show, but the producers like to pick and chose your jokes... so they need a certain amount to pick from. Sometimes they let you do what you want.. and sometimes you just need a good half hour of jokes... but the point is... if you havent built a library of jokes that "work"... they think you're too green for prime time.

Jerry, and Larry David, had been comics for a while. Larry was a writer on SNL... Jerry had less experience... but had an act... it was fleshed out, he was fine tuned... and the networks come to you with the idea that "we like what we saw in your act, and i think it could work"

So yes the show reflects their comedy persona... and material.

In Larry and Jerry's case, they had gone back and forth with the networks before signing a deal, they proposed script ideas etc. This is all common place with comedians when they reach a certain level.

Pretty much every comic on TV went through this process... like Steven Wright, Bill Hicks, Louie C.K., Jim Norton, Patrice Oneal, Dennis Leary, Lenny Clark, Chris Rock.... etc

They all work their material, fine tune it... and the networks (cable and the major 3) take notice, or are notified by agents that so and so is hot.

Its a process. You just dont end up on TV one day with a new idea. Its an evolution in a comedians life. Many comics arent keen on the sitcom thing because.. often they suck. In the case of Sienfeld... it was brilliant and well respected... but in the case of Full House... not so :) Yet Bob Sagat is a funny fucking man. So sitcoms arent quite the goal anymore, perhaps movies... but definitely the tonight show, letterman and HBO are goals for most comics

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[Gilmoure]

I wish Drew Barrymore was an emperor.

Re:Penny Arcade called it

[syousef]

I guarantee they had to re shoot several times and be on the set for 2 or more days to shoot each 30 second spot because of Bill being a non actor.

Clearly you've never seen him speak at a conference. Anyone who can stand up and tell you with a straight face VISTA is great is one fine actor.

People would have been happier?

[Pikoro]

"People would have been happier if everyone loved the ads, but this was not unexpected."

As if anyone understood the ad at all, let alone were happy about it.

Re:People would have been happier?

[hairyfeet]

Or having older folks come up to tech guys like me with questions like "Hey,did you see that Seinfeld commercial with that computer guy?" 'Bill Gates and yeah,what about it?' "Well,what does it mean?" like there was some hidden geek code in the thing that only tech guys would understand. Not a single person said anything about Microsoft,Windows,OR Vista.....they just wanted to know what the secret meaning to the ads were. I think because nobody could accept that anyone would spend that kind of money on ads that didn't actually SELL anything.

Me personally,I have to say that for me that have to take the cake as really stupid ads go. I mean,sure that one where the idiot girl raises her arms every 3 seconds to show you her pits is irritating as hell,but at least you knew what she was pushing,but with the Seinfeld ads they could have been for sneakers as far as anyone knew. So unless their goal was to have an entire country go WTF??? I'd say they were a failure. And to replace them with a ripoff of the "Mac VS PC" commercials is just sad. It'll just make them look a day late,a dollar short,and unable to do anything but rip off the Mac. Just sad. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

Re:People would have been happier?

[Anonymous Coward]

nice for a company to be branded pointless in peoples' minds

Re:People would have been happier?

[Drinking Bleach]

And Microsoft has never been bad in marketing.

There's been a few disasters in Microsoft marketing in the past, but their track record is usually rather successful. These short series of ads were a failure, I've heard one person ask me "Is that supposed to be their rebuttal against Apple?", and she uses Windows!

Well, they're trying to get their "Windows Mojave" thing to succeed.... but I admit, I don't really see how they can repair damages of Windows Vista purely in marketing.

Re:People would have been happier?

[forgoil]

Not unexpected? Why did they make the commercials if they didn't even freakin' expect them to work? That's just amazingly stupid and unprofessional.

Re:People would have been happier?

[Lumpy]

I tell them the secret meaning...

"Bill gates is so rich that he's simply showing off to the world that he pays Jerry to hang with him. It's basically a giant hey America you suck sign, as he rubs in your face that you are forced to give him money and there is nothing you can do about it.

He's goading you at the fact you dont have a choice and are forced to pay him money and you cant do anythign about it."

They usually stand their open mouthed and then say.... "you're right! you cant buy a pc without windows! OMG! OMG!!" and they run off to tell others.

I love their new advertising arm. they help me screw with people daily.

Re:People would have been happier?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hey,did you see that Seinfeld commercial with that computer guy?" 'Bill Gates and yeah,what about it?' "Well,what does it mean?"

at which point I hand them a churro and tell them:
"I know it doesn't make sense now, but as soon as you finish it, you'll fell right as rain."

We've been selling a lot of churros.

Re:People would have been happier?

[Zenaku]

In what sense does paying to produce and air commercial advertisements constitute "free" marketing?

Re:People would have been happier?

[Sancho]

Truly, the Seinfeld ads were the MS Bob of marketing.

Re:People would have been happier?

[JStegmaier]

a day late,a dollar short,and unable to do anything but rip off the Mac.

Yep, that's Microsoft.

Re:People would have been happier?

[Fr05t]

"And to replace them with a ripoff of the "Mac VS PC" commercials is just sad. It'll just make them look a day late,a dollar short,and unable to do anything but rip off the Mac."

That my friend is called honesty in advertising.

Re:People would have been happier?

[hairyfeet]

That would be a good theory if their problem was simply folks not knowing about the product. The problem is when customers come to me asking for a PC built and I offer Vista as an option I get "EEEEWWW!" like I let loose a raunchy fart in front of them. And I have a couple of customers a month coming to me saying "I got this new machine and it has Vista and it sucks really hard! Please put XP on it!". So the problem isn't getting the name out,just the opposite in fact. The problem is Vista=big festering turd in the minds of most of the public and all the Mojave tricks in the world isn't going to change that fact.

Of course if anyone at MSFT had a brain they would accept the failure of Vista,cut their losses,and push "XP SP3:Reloaded" until they can get Win7 out the door. Because I have yet to find an average user that actually likes Vista. It has gotten bad enough that I send folks with Vista down the street because I don't want to deal with "downgrade" rights. And from the other shops I have talked to I am not alone. So trying to make hip ads is like putting lipstick on the pig because too many have a brother/cousin/coworker burnt by Vista and are avoiding it like the clap. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

I enjoyed them!

[Solokron]

I for one actually enjoyed those ads! To see those two together in a commercial was uncanny.

Re:I enjoyed them!

[sleeponthemic]

Yeah, I agree. Atleast, I enjoyed the second one. Not as an ad though.. more as an interesting short. I can't really fathom how the intention could be anything more than that given the way they were made/scripted.

Re:I enjoyed them!

[EdZ]

Same here. They were pretty funny, if almost completely unrelated to windows. Maybe it's just my love of absurd humour.

Re:I enjoyed them!

[Bohabo]

I'm rather disappointed by this news. The first ad had me scratching my head, but I thought the second one was rather funny and I was interested to see where, if anywhere, they were going to go with it. They sucked as advertisements, and I know for damn sure they weren't going to have me wiping my Debian install any time soon, but none the less, I enjoyed watching them.

Re:I enjoyed them!

[JasterBobaMereel]

Fairly amusing and quite a good advert for Seinfeld... what do you mean they were an advert for Microsoft?!

 

Re:I enjoyed them!

[hal9000(jr)]

Gasp, you mean expressing an opinion that runs counter to the majority of /. audience can get me karma? Crap, I can write a bot to do that. Let me see, Microsoft Good. Linux Bad. DRM good, RMS bad.

I thought the ads were very funny. They didn't have a message, which is probably why they were pulled, but yeah, I sat through both twice because I missed some jokes from my own laughter.

Re:I enjoyed them!

[houghi]

You watched it, you talk about it. That is what ad makers want you to do. All the rest is extra.

Re:I enjoyed them!

[Lumpy]

you're just waiting for the next one where they walk around a corner and bump into a guy in a giant penguin suit.

Jerry and bill stand back staring as the penguin turns around and all you see is a closeup of Jerry's face....

NEWMAN!

black screen... Why hello jerry....

Re:I enjoyed them!

[mdm-adph]

PRECISELY. Now, Microsoft is perfectly poised to come out with the "real" advertising campaign with the pitch (now that they've got everyone's attention). I'm surprised more people don't see this.

Re:I enjoyed them!

[sessamoid]

Not anymore. Product awareness is what it is about.

Not for Microsoft. I don't think product awareness is much of a need for Microsoft Windows. What they were trying to accomplish was to change their brand image, to make themselves appear "cool". They failed miserably. What a massive waste of money.

Re:I enjoyed them!

[joranbelar]

To be fair, it's not exactly unexpected that people would talk about the ads on a slashdot discussion centering around those ads.

Nobody outside of slashdot is discussing them more than a few seconds after they air. They really don't have anyone's attention.

The ads weren't that great.

[suck_burners_rice]

Well the ad wasn't exactly imaginative. If it was supposed to compete with Apple's Mac vs. PC ads, which many people apparently find comical and true, it didn't do a very good job. They really need to come up with something better than that.

Re:The ads weren't that great.

[AngryNick]

Like the OS, the ad I saw was bloated with themes and disconnected ideas that never seemed to come together to be anything amazing. Maybe there was going to be an SP1 for the ad that was going to explain it all?

Re:The ads weren't that great.

[TheRaven64]

Not imaginative? I can think of lots of criticisms for the ads, but I wouldn't put the failure down to lack of imagination. Lack of any selling points for the product, maybe (presumably they have some, but it's generally considered a good idea to tell the marketing guys what they are before they start designing the ads).

Re:The ads weren't that great.

[aussie_a]

If it was supposed to compete with Apple's Mac vs. PC ads, which many people apparently find comical and true

Y'know I've never been a fan of negative ad campaigns. If the best thing you can say about your product is "we don't suck as much as the other guy" I'm probably not going to bother switching.

Re:The ads weren't that great.

[FireFury03]

presumably they have some, but it's generally considered a good idea to tell the marketing guys what they are before they start designing the ads

I looked at the ads and concluded that they'd got a bunch of marketing guys who had no clue what they were supposed to be selling and gave them a *lot* of glue to sniff...

Re:The ads weren't that great.

[FireFury03]

Y'know I've never been a fan of negative ad campaigns. If the best thing you can say about your product is "we don't suck as much as the other guy" I'm probably not going to bother switching.

This is why I often don't vote - none of the parties tell me what *they* plan to do, they only tell me what they think the other party is going to get wrong. So clearly if they aren't going to tell anyone about their policies then the policies are probably not worth voting for.

Sadly, negative campaigns (both commercial and political) seem to become more and more popular so presumably they do work. :(

Re:The ads weren't that great.

[Gerad]

You can be comparative without being negative. The Mac vs. PC ads do discuss PCs and sometimes point out PCs weaknesses, but a number of the ones I've seen also highlight what Apple has done to improve on the PC design (the magnetic laptop cords to mind).

Re:The ads weren't that great.

[geekoid]

No, you often don't vote because you are a lazy ass.
You can look up voting records, history, etc...
Stop making these pathetic excuses for not wanting tom get up off your ass.

Re:The ads weren't that great.

[aussie_a]

A lot of them seem to be "Mac is cool, you can do stuff like make videos while on a PC you can make spreadsheets." Not only is it untrue, its insulting to anyone with half a brain.

Sadly expected

[David Gerard]

I toldja - they shoulda gone with a real comedian.

I was looking for them working their way back through the comedic genius of history ... perhaps W.C. Fields next. All the way back to Aristophanes.

Or, in a more famous joke:

"Vista's slow, it's fat, I can't get drivers, my network grinds to a crawl when I play an mp3! What do you call that?"

"... The Aristocrats!"

Re:Sadly expected

[ZarathustraDK]

Rather re-invent the joke.

Person: "Then I forced the ethernet-cable in the slot, rebooted while tearing out my nosehairs and slapping my dick at the computer in a vain attempt to feel superior...(5 minutes later)...then I did a defragmentation of the hard-drive but the damn things IS STILL TOO DAMN SLOW!".

Talent-agent: " What do you call that?"

Person: "The Vistacrats".

Just as I was getting into it!

[PinkyDead]

Problem was that the sexual tension between those two guys was too intense - it would never have ended well.

Re:Just as I was getting into it!

[Alex Belits]

If someone could see the sexual tension in that, there would be fanfiction about it.

Just imagine -- yaoi-fangirl of those two. Kill it with fire. Kill it with fire!

For comparison -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLiyglcRcCA

References:

1. http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/Sakuya_Izayoi
2. http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/Hong_Meirin
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbArvIqZzkI

Re:Just as I was getting into it!

[muftak]

rule 34!

Re:Just as I was getting into it!

[ozmanjusri]

If someone could see the sexual tension in that, there would be fanfiction about it.

Scariest application of Rule 34 ever.

Until Ballmer gets involved...

George Orwell and Grammar!

[Anonymous Coward]

"People would have been happier if everyone loved the ads, but this was not unexpected."

That sentence makes George Orwell roll over in his grave. All that "not un-" faked vocabulary and smugness, just say "People would have been happier if everyone loved the ads, but we expected it" and get it over with!

Re:George Orwell and Grammar!

[Mantaar]

Sorry, but you're so wrong, it's hilarious. Google for double negation and you shall see.

This has been in use for quite a while. I remember translating Cicero, and he used a lot of it, so it's at least 2000 years old.

Re:George Orwell and Grammar!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not unexpected" isn't actually the same thing as "expected", though. The former is closer to "we saw that it could happen".

Put another way, on the scale from "unexpected", through "unsure" to "expected", the former includes everything but the left end, while the latter is only the right end.

Re:George Orwell and Grammar!

[Koiu Lpoi]

Yes, we've all read it. Orwell tells us to think of something like a not unblack dog and a not unwhite rabbit, completely missing the idea behind it that said structure never uses concrete objects. While Orwell may have had a point (but I don't think so), his own example and reasoning falls flat.

Re:George Orwell and Grammar!

[chthon]

Pitr, stop teasing the botnets!!

Re:George Orwell and Grammar!

[bentcd]

Are you the kind of person who says "I feel badly?" Go ahead. Admit it. You are.

I have a badly feeling about the way this is goingly.

So, back to mojave then

[RLiegh]

...I'm seeing those ads all over the place; I've only seen the Seinfeld ads twice, I think.

What's strange is this --didn't MS drop the ad agency that came up with the Mojave ads because they were a flop?

I guess when you've got nothing ...you've just got nothing.

Clearly I'm weird.

[Angostura]

I thought the first ad was limp, but I actually enjoyed the second one and was looking forward to more. Not that it would have made any difference to my OS-buying proclivities, but I thought they were at least interesting.

Re:Clearly I'm weird.

[vedant_lath]

Same here.

Microsoft's New Ads Revealed!

[CuteSteveJobs]

FADE IN

A Chair

VOICEOVER: Vista. Use it. Or Else.

FADE TO BLACK

Gates and Seinfeld....

[Fengpost]

They are just too rich to connect with regular folks. Besides, it has nothing to do with Vista, it is just an exercise of the cilt of personality of Bill Gates.

Re:Gates and Seinfeld....

[CrackedButter]

Hands up if you saw the word 'clit' first, rather than 'cult'. I have thought with all the stories about scientology on slashdot my subconscious would let me see the second word first.

Re:Gates and Seinfeld....

[blind biker]

it is just an exercise of the cilt

You know, at first I misread that and was extremely amused.

Re:Gates and Seinfeld....

[D Ninja]

Dude. We're talking about Bill Gates here...

Oog.

We win, you lose!

[FornaxChemica]

"We made these ads because we knew you wouldn't like them. Yes, it was all planned. We made them so we could pull them. Now Vista's sales are not going to improve in any way. This is also planned. It's all part of a very clever plot in which we look like a bunch of idiots wasting time and money. Amazing! Fantastic! This is why we're number 1."

Re:We win, you lose!

[Linker3000]

Surely Microsoft will just push for all marketing agencies to use Seinfeld in *ALL* TV ads so 'their way' becomes the defacto standard.
   

Re:The ads were perfect for Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Ubuntu really blew me away:
      - Every time an update occurs, it takes more and more space on my hard disk, and the boot screen is filled with 100 versions of linux kernels.
      - It took me one week to get my wifi card to work properly with wpa, with all the incomplete/outdated documentation available. Eventually, I found, by chance, a message on a forum.
      - After a kernel update, my wifi card couldn't work anymore. My card is not an alien from another planet. It is a well-known card model.
      - So I went back to the older kernel. What happened? Nautilus didn't work anymore!
      - A certain indexation service (I forgot its name) runs regularly. Then my computer does not respond anymore. It's a modern computer (AMD64 quad-core with 3 Gb of RAM).

I am a software engineer for a living, but when I use my system, I expect it to run out-of-the-box,
I want to feel like the base customer, not the software engineer.

Made sense to me ..

[Layth]

It was an advertisement about nothing.
Haven't you guys ever seen an episode of Seinfeld?

Spooked by the commentators... tsk tsk tsk

[distantbody]

...I for one LIKED the ads, with its 'nothingness' agenda... Surely they would have known that this brand campaign would need TIME and COMMITMENT to have a payoff!

I'll repeat that: Surely they would have known that this brand campaign would need TIME and COMMITMENT to have a payoff! ....

Maybe at least it's not too late...

They accomplished their goal

[harlows_monkeys]

They got people talking. The last two TWiT podcasts, for example, included long discussions of the ads. The discussion was critical of them--but the ads got Leo Laporte and his guests to spend something like 30 minutes of some of the most valuable podcast time on the...er......uhm..,pod(?) talking about them.

One of the guests, not quite seriously, did a detailed symbolic analysis of the second ad. He said the old lady represented Steve Jobs--she had been living with the family for the same amount of time since Steve came back to Apple.

Am I missing something?

[MarkKB]

I must be missing something. Cancelled?

Cancelled is what happens when a contract is revoked. As far as I know, Microsoft is continuing with Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

Cancelled is what happens if they were planning to make more of the same vein. I see no indication of that, but of the expectant bloggers.

Microsoft had always said that the Bill & Seinfield ads were not a campaign unto itself, but an icebreaker, or rather, "phase one". Indeed, it would not surprise me if Microsoft's announcement was all about the new ads, and didn't mention Bill & Seinfield at all.

Me thinks Valleywag focused on what they wanted to hear, not what was actually said overall.

The announcement shoulda said...

[clickety6]

Microsoft says Vista is over â" In a phone call, Steve Ballmer, confirms that Microsoft is not going on with Vista, and echoes his underlings' spin that the move was planned. There is the "potential to do other things" with Windows, which Ballmer says is still "possible." He adds: "People would have been happier if everyone loved Vista, but this was not unexpected.""

Re:Another airhead blog

[pandrijeczko]

As a mostly Linux user, I don't actually give a toss about this topic anyway - in much the same way that I really didn't give a toss when IBM used a white-haired kid to advertise Linux a few years ago.

I think you'll find that the majority of Linux people on here aren't fanbois but computer techies who treat Linux as a useful tool to get stuff done in, just like any other OS.

Yes, you can't beat Linux and scripting for being able to embrace the power of a computer - but you also can't beat XP as a games platform and as a platform for knocking out training slides in Powerpoint and whilst I don't do much graphics or video editing work, there's nothing on Linux to compete with Photoshop etc. (though The GIMP does everything I need from a graphics editor).

So please don't tar us all with the same brush.

Mind Bogglingly Bad

[Phoenix666]

I saw the awful Gates & Seinfeld commercial last night where Gates does the Robot, and commented to my wife that Microsoft must have the lowest advertising ROI of all time. It's mind boggling that a company with that much money could do so poorly with their advertising campaigns. They can certainly afford to do better, so why don't they?

It's surprising that Crispin Porter is their agency, since they're about the highest rated in the advertising game. Perhaps it's something about Microsoft that exudes a lameness that overwhelms all else.

Re:The ads were perfect for Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, so you agree, it is much better than Vista.


(Damn Ubuntu fan boys always pointing out how much better they have it;-)

My two cents.

[Antony-Kyre]

The commercials seem to be about nothing. We don't learn about the product. I don't get how this was suppose to be helpful to Microsoft.

I think a better idea, for a gimmick, would be, "Try Windows Vista. If you don't like it after 30 days, we'll buy you a copy of Ubuntu."

(Yes, I'm trying for humour here.)

Re:The Ads Sucked

[ledow]

I must say this a hundred times a year.

The largest road in London (the M25 motorway that circles the entire city and has more cars on it than any other road in the UK) has a large warehouse by the side of it (Jct 27/28 if memory serves) which has, in twenty-foot-high letters:

Sericol. More than ink. Solutions.

written on it. What the hell do they sell? *Do* they in fact sell ink? Do they offer "ink solutions"? (whatever the hell they are) Do they sell printing? Do they process squid? I have no bloody idea. What if I just wanted ink? Sod it. It's easier to phone someone else.

About once a week, I'll see a building, advertisment or painted vehicle which is supposed to be drawing my attention to a company, product, or service and doesn't tell me what those products are. These are all examples that I've seen and which are complete copies of an advert, or sign on a van. Some of the product names have been changed because they were SO memorable that I can't remember the exact wording, website, logo etc.

Fred's Services Ltd. Call 0800XXXXXXX. (Services FOR WHAT? And they even paid to have a freefone number)
Adventis. www.adventis.com (I made up the name/website)
Patricks - Solutions for the modern world. (no services, no phone number, no website, nothing.)
(Funny logo) - Ring 08XXXXXXXXX for our full range of services. (no, you bloody print them on the advert, or at least give me a vague idea).

Wow...

[gaspyy]

"Microsoft To Announce Jerry Seinfeld Ads Cancelled "

Even Digg managed to find a more appropriate headline:
"Microsoft's New Ad:Seinfeld and Gates out, Hodgman Lookalike"
linking to the NYTimes article "Echoing the Campaign of a Rival, Microsoft Aims to Redefine 'I'm a PC'"

To those who actually think the Gates/Seinfeld got canceled: the commercials played for one week each. Now in the third week and today we get the 'new' style. Do you honestly think they scrambled to get something done within a week?

I know the Slashdot crowd hates MS with a passion but don't let your hate cloud your judgement.

Seinfeld plays opposite losers

[Kupfernigk]

Seinfeld is an actor who built his reputation on a sitcom in which the other characters were, for the most part, losers. He then appears in an advert intended to remind people of this sitcom, in which the other character is William Gates III.

The symbolism seems sufficiently obvious. But it leaves me with a major set of questions. How did Steve Jobs manage to bribe the ad agency to come up with the idea? How did they manage to get Microsoft to fall for it? Does the Jobs reality distortion field really extend that far?

I guess, since a lot of creative ad people are still Mac fanboys, the first part might have been easy. But the second part must have been the pitch from hell. Perhaps it only worked because the Gates mansion is so vast that Gates has never found the TV room and so never seen the programme.

Re:Seinfeld plays opposite losers

[TempeTerra]

Hmm, yes, not quite what I was thinking of though. Basil Fawlty is a terrible person and does not succeed, but he is not as... impotent... as the characters in Seinfeld. He's supremely confident in himself and takes decisive but disastrous action. Not that different from Kramer I suppose, but in a different context. On reflection I didn't mind Kramer as much as the other characters. I must admit in embarrassment that I haven't seen the Office.

The problem of course is that I don't know exactly what annoys me about the Seinfeld characters.

Me too

[MarkByers]

I saw them too and I enjoyed them. Now give me some karma as well.

Larry David

[AlpineR]

If they wanted to make commercials in the vein of Seinfeld, they should have hired Larry David. He seems to have been the real genius behind that series.

Hey! Let's Copy Apple!

[qazwart]

That's probably the thinking at Microsoft. Apple has these ads with two guys talking to each other, and that's cool. We should do the same. And, who's cooler than that 1990 comedy sensation, Jerry Steinfeld?

The problem is that Apple had two people, one young and cool, the other old and not-so-cool. Microsoft's ads had two old, not-so-cool people in them. I'm sure that all of them college kids really related to two 50+ years olds wandering around and talking about random stuff.

I can hear them now: "Hey, that's just like my grandpa! Right before we put him in the nursing home."

Did anyone actually *watch* Seinfeld?

[wandazulu]

The show was not about "nothing", as joked about in some episodes, it was about four *extremely* *unlikeable* people *doing* nothing.

The last episode was the clue-by-four to the head for all those viewers who didn't get it; they bring back all the people whose lives had been casually wrecked by the main characters, and in the end (SPOILER ALERT, if you care), they end up all locked in a cell, the ultimate punishment that they have to spend their time together.

And from this Microsoft thought they could improve their branding? If anything, it's somehow appropriate, Microsoft is the company that casually wrecks your (digital) life.
 

people would love the ads

[nimbius]

if they were discordian. penny hits the nail on the head. i have no idea what shoe squishing, churro munching jerry seinfeld is trying to sell, or for that matter what bill "wiggle-ass" gates has on the horizon besides hip displacia and a completely unrealistic scenario of him being spotted in the local mall by a million dollar celebrity.

Give me a sign if you think this ad is crap

[Anonymous Coward]

(Bill shakes his ass)

Crap commercials.

[MaWeiTao]

The commercials were lame, but as far as crap commercials they're far from the worst. I feel like a good 75% of commercials have been developed not for the sake of the client but rather so that the advertising company has yet another portfolio piece.

This must be planned

[toppings]

I am completely guessing here, but I gotta think that this cancelation is part of the campaign. This announcement will probably get as much exposure as the ads themselves.

• Release well produced but confusing and ineffective ads
• Publicize the cancellation and fallout
• Create fake conflict between Seinfeld and Gates?
• Resolve conflict through YouTube/billboards/campaign-type commercials
• Profit!

Either that, or this has been a gigantic embarrassing blunder by a company that actually has a lot at stake on this.

I think they got what they wanted.... press!

[gosand]

What blows my mind is what raging idiot at Microsoft green lighted this ad campaign? they KNEW that it was a flop from the above statement. yet they still spend the outrageous cash to have written and shoot and print those horrid commercials? Holy crap do they also wallpaper the walls at Microsoft with 100 bills just before they repaint them so they can figure out how to waste money even faster?

Hmm... well, there HAS been a lot of discussion about these terrible commercials. Now there is discussion about them being cancelled.

Would we have given them this much attention otherwise? Maybe the intent was exactly that, to raise the "WTF" and to get people to speculate what they meant. They just failed, and nobody really cared all that much.

Apple's response...

[oahazmatt]

I can see Apple's response to this admission of failure, now.

Mac: Hello, I'm a Mac.
PC: An I'm a PC.
Mac: What's wrong PC you look a little down?
PC: Well, Mac's got this slick advertising campaign-thing going, so...
Mac: You mean like how the benefits and ease of using a Mac is explained in contrast to the competition?
PC: Yeah, and--
Mac: And your new ads don't represent any of that?
PC: Well, yeah, but--
Mac: In fact, the only thing your ads really did have was a shoe-squeezing, churro-munching, butt-wiggling figurehead and a worn-out comedy act that's staler than month old toast.
PC: Well, it's not all bad. It got people talking--
Mac: Yeah, "WTF" maybe, that's not good talking.
PC: But, those ads did do wonders to show off the capabilities of the Mac, y'know?
Mac: Wait, what?
PC: Yeah, the ad agency uses Macs for all of their productions.
Mac: Gimme a break.
PC: I will not. I'll have you know the entire campaign was done in iMovie.
Mac: That's bull--
PC: Oh yeah. That horrible ad campaign? We wouldn't have been able to get it done without the ease of use of a brand new iMac. I guess it's really your fault.
Mac: Oh jesus--
PC: Do you feel it, Mac? The darkness wriggling inside of you?
Mac: I'm gonna be sick--
PC: This is your fault, Mac!
*Mac doubles-over and throws up on the floor.*
PC: Yeah, that's it. Now bend over and take your Vista install like a good little--

The future. Deceitful.

Here is the joke

[mcmonkey]

And here is your head. *woosh*

His show was based off his stand-up. Simply put, it's comedy by observation. He see's something odd and then mentions it.

There's a show called 'Seinfeld' with a character named 'Jerry Seinfeld'. That show is not about that character.

I'm sure there's some formal term in literary criticism, perhaps in latin, for the use of a narrator to give us a peek into a world when the focus of that world is not the narrator, but some other character the narrator observes.

I don't know the term, but that is what we have here. In this case, Jerry is just a vehicle to transport into the world of George.

The show originated and was written primary (in the beginning) by Larry David. George is Larry's alter ego. The show is about George.

The show had very little to do with Seinfeld's comedy. The bits of stand up at the start and end of the shows was time filler.

[Comedian] is a little dull (particularly considering when it's about comedians) but there are some pretty true parts in it.

That sort of like saying a documentary about weight room workouts isn't as entertaining as a football game. Comedian, like The Aristocrats, is not a comedy. It is about the business of comedy. If you're only interested in what comedians do on stage, both these movies are dull. If you're interested in what happens before (and after) the short period of time comedians are on stage, they are not dull at all.

Re:Here is the joke

[sesshomaru]

It's basically a Comedy of Manners. Most of my favorite sitcoms, The Office, The Sopranos, Fawlty Towers, Curb Your Enthusiasm are.

Society has all these hidden rules. We all know what the rules are. We might not realize how important they are or how serious a breach of these social rules will be until someone does it. George and the others, for whatever reason, ends up breaching these rules constantly on the show, usually when he's put into a situation where breaching the rules = personal gain (or avoiding a personal loss). For example, a fire in which he tramples old people, cripples, women and children to get out alive and then has to justify his "unmanly" behavior later when confronted with it.

Often, Seinfeld himself plays the role of the straight man. So he doesn't get the funniest lines or to do the funniest things, but he does get to react to other characters (both the main ones and some of the weird guest stars). He acts as "the voice of reason" informing the characters that something is a bad idea as an aside, "Oh, that should be enough video tape to record the experiment, the arrest and most of the trial."

I liked the ads

[rwa2]

OK, maybe it's because I actually didn't pay much attention to them, but they seemed consistent with Bill Gates' sense of humor. Remember the "Da da da" ad with the he and Ballmer driving around and finding a discarded SUN workstation?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrwnJDQy0ic

I can't really imagine what a "good" Microsoft ad would possibly look like, so I think the WTF ads we got were kind of neat, considering they came from the former richest man in the world probably as part of some ego-stroke / lifelong dream.

Of all the things we've seen and expected from Bill Gates, I'd have to say this ranks as "cool" . Strange, but cool.

It's EASY to see why this happened

[ChrisA90278]

We know one thing for sure Bill Gates himself bought off on the idea. He would have never agreed to be in front of the camera if he didn't like the idea. So with Gates giving the thumbs up to the project everyone at Microsoft was scared shit-less to say it was a bad idea. So only after it was on the air and it was so obvouisly pointless could they remove it.

I know what Gatets was thinking too. I tried being on film once too. It was fun trying to act but then I saw the result. Man was it bad. After that I decided to work only in back of the camera. I do much better there. Likely Gates saw himself on TV and thought "OMG this is bad", just like I did. So they spent $10M on it. To him that's pocket change.

So, "getting people talking" isn't success?

[merreborn]

Guess that settles it. The defenders of these ads kept claiming "If the ad itself is being talked about, then it has been successful". (and apparently a few moderators agreed)

Apparently the people paying the bills don't agree. Getting slashdot to talk about Jerry Seinfeld isn't worth hundreds of thousands of dollars after all. Who knew?

Firings!

[aaronfaby]

I really hope someone got the axe for coming up with such an awful commercial and wasting all that money.