MichaelGowin.com/blog

We’re all familiar with the ubiquitous “Get a Mac” ads in which the uber-cool Mac (Justin Long) trades barbs with the hapless and frumpy PC (John Hodgman).  In its June 2008 issue, FastCompany reported that Microsoft was working with ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky to help bolster the company’s image.  Now FoxNews indicates that Microsoft has spent $300 million on a campaign that will feature Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates together:

The new ad effort is expected to use some variation of the slogan “Windows, Not Walls,” according to several people familiar with the matter. Those people say the point is to stress breaking down barriers that prevent people and ideas from connecting. The campaign, said to debut Sept. 4, is one of the largest in the company’s history…

Microsoft’s immediate goal is to reverse the negative public perception of Windows Vista, the latest version of the company’s personal-computer operating system. 

Perception is manageable if the underlying product/company is sound; however, when an industry leading publication like PC Magazine publishes an article entitled “How to Downgrade from Vista,” and commentator John Dvorak writes a piece called “Vista’s 11 Pillars of Failure,” and WSJ tech writer Walt Mossberg calls Vista “worthy” but “unexciting,” the issues may be more than just skin deep.  Users will be better served if Microsoft can engineer its next operating system to be better than Apple’s Mac OS.  Giving Steve Jobs a reason to lose sleep at night (and he’s probably not losing sleep over Vista or the forthcoming ad campaign) would motivate Apple to bolster its OS development efforts.  In that scenario, everybody wins.

Filed under: Marketing by Michael