The irony is enough to make your head explode. The latest evolution of Microsoft’s new ad campaign–the one designed to seize back control of the Windows PC image that Apple’s so mercilessly tarred and feathered–wasn’t even made on a PC. It was made on a Mac.
The appeal of Fox’s reality show, “The Simple Life,” may have eluded you and me, but it has clearly struck a chord with Microsoft and its new ad agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, which seems to envision Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and comedian Jerry Seinfeld as the Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie of tech. To wit, “New Family,” the second spot in the CP+B-produced campaign for Microsoft, which features Gates and Seinfeld moving in with a family of “real people” and connecting with them.
So Microsoft’s widely publicized “edgy” ad campaign, the one designed to counter the Apple ads that have so eroded its brand, is to feature Jerry Seinfeld as celebrity pitchman. In many ways, that does more to illustrate the sad differences between the two companies than the “Mac vs. PC” ads it’s designed to combat.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
While the technology behind the Telephone is new, the design is reassuringly old-fashioned, reminiscent of a phrenologist’s horn or ear-candle in form. We found the experience far more comfortable than the one we had with the Telegraph.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
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