September 19th, 2008
New Microsoft Commercials Are Live — and Much Better
By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews
The new Microsoft ads went live on Thursday. And at the start of each ad is Sean Siler, a Microsoft employee who, luckily for Microsoft bears some resemblance to John Hodgman, the PC in Apple’s ads. In the first and third ads, he says “I’m a PC, and I’ve been made into a stereotype. In the second ad he says, “I’m a PC, and I’m not alone.”
Thereafter, in each ad, follows a montage of people saying “I’m a PC,” and sometimes adding an additional comment. Bill Gates shows up in ad 1, as does Eva Longoria — and Tony Parker.
The idea of this campaign, despite the fact it might be confusing, though not as confusing as the Seinfeld ads, is that the people in the ads, by saying they are PCs, are showing the variety of users of Windows computers.
Quite a few Microsoft employees show up in the ads, and if they do their email address is shown on the screen as well. If you try emailing Sean Siler’s email, you’ll get an interesting auto-reply:
Hello! I’m a PC – and I can’t answer your email right now. I’d like to say that I’m out climbing Mt. Rainier or biking across Europe with the Swedish Beach Volleyball Team, but in fact I’m probably just chained to a desk somewhere in the depths of Redmond pounding out product specifications.
Now that I have been in a commercial, Microsoft has given me access to super-secret “BillyG” level of executive resources. That’s right – I have my own email auto-responder!
This, as you have probably surmised, is my pre-prepared auto-response (All natural, no filler. No animals were harmed in the making of this response. Except for a ferret.) I really would like to have answered you myself, but if I did, (a) I’d probably get no work done, and (b) then I’d get fired, and (c) then I’d have no chance of doing any more of those really awesome commercials.
So let me try to prognosticate a few of your questions and answer a few of them.
Why did they put you on TV? I think it’s my devastating good-looks and animal magnetism. No, really – there’s a ferret stuck to my leg right now.
But really – you aren’t even an actor! No I’m not. But I play one on TV. I really am a Microsoft Program Manager. I work on IPv6, and other things that you haven’t heard of.
How did you get selected? I auditioned along with a couple of hundred others. I guess I looked very Engineery. And the ferret probably helped.
Are you interested in more acting? Oh no, I think that Engineering is MUCH more fun.
What’s with Windows Vista? You’ve been watching those commercials again, haven’t you? Windows Vista rocks. Listen to real users, not actors.
-The Real PC, Sean Siler
I have to say, I liked the new ads. Why? Because they were snappy, quick, and to the point. And I got “it,” as well. With real people (well, with the exception of a few celebrities).
Watch the videos:
Who Cares? says:
Once a dork, always a dork… there is no way to “dress up” Bill Gates….
September 19th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Jim says:
yawn…
September 19th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Geo8rge says:
I’m a LINUX and ….
That’s the video I want to see. (Typed from a G3 laptop)
September 19th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
LZW says:
The ads couldn’t get much worse then the one with Seinfeld so it’s good they are better… Have you seen the Windows Mojave ad though?
They show all of these people around computers commenting about how great Mojave is and then reveal it is Windows Vista. The odd thing is all of the scenes are shot from the back side of a computer monitor! You never once get to see what they are doing or what is on the screen.
I guess everyone knows what Vista looks like but it seems like they are trying to hide something or that the people are actually professional actors and they don’t show the front of the monitors because they’re just blank screens.
If I were Microsoft and making a Vista ad, it would simply say…
“If you’re still using XP and thinking you’ll just wait for next year and upgrade to Windows 7, consider how long it took us to create Vista! You might as well just upgrade to Vista now and stop putting it off.”
September 20th, 2008 at 12:09 am
Caco Potoso says:
I am NOT a pc fan (but I do have a sony laptp). I am a Linux and OS X user most of the time.
I think these adds are EXCELLENT. Really cool.
September 20th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Terrible! says:
…some of the stupidest commercials I’ve ever seen!!! What is the point?
September 21st, 2008 at 10:39 am
Jim Frost says:
I thought the 2nd of the Seinfeld commercials made a heck of a lot more sense than the first, although both were going to go right over the head of most of the audience.
The new commercials are better but in light of Apple’s ads they seem somewhat strident: “Despite what Apple says everyone’s doing it, so should you.” Yea, ok, everyone knows Windows runs on most of the world’s computers. Popularity in and of itself doesn’t imply “good.”
Which brings me to the Mojave commercial, which is just pap. I use Vista and while it’s true that it doesn’t blue screen all the time (except my daughter’s computer, which DOES blue screen all the time, for reasons as yet unknown) I had several compatibility issues (some of which are still not resolved a year and a half later), it cost literally hundreds of dollars to bulk up then-new machines to the point where Vista was fast enough to keep me from pulling my hair out, there have been some really subtle things that led to tremendous confusion (like the per-process virtualization of C:\Program Files making files appear to vanish except inside a particular application) and UAC’s user interface is beyond annoying.
But hey, I totally believe that if you let people use a set of preinstalled, modern applications on a machine that has 2GB RAM or more the experience will be pretty good. That really doesn’t describe what most of us have to work with though.
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
September 22nd, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Devicepedia says:
Who cares what one thinks or not,
I am still confused about the point though.
September 23rd, 2008 at 12:59 am