Friday, September 12, 2008
The Simple Life: Gates and Seinfeld, the Hilton and Richie of Tech
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.
