Comedy
Bill & Jerry's Excellent Adventure
12/August/08 03:47 PM Filed in: Media
I’ve made a big investment in Apple products over the years. OK, I openly adore them. I’ve owned seven Macs and even my five month old daughter knows to buy me an iPhone for Father’s Day. But that doesn’t automatically make me a Microsoft hater.
Which brings me to their latest $300 million ad campaign staring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. I admire Bill Gates. He’s probably the only person ever to get the better of Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs by making him hand Microsoft the keys to the Mac OS code, which hey copied and... well... the rest is history. He’s a generous man too with a social conscience. But what I like most about Gates and what this campaign demonstrates is that he doesn’t take himself too seriously. Try saying that about Steve Jobs!
Just as Jobs is the face of Apple, McCann Erickson are right in using Gates as the face of Microsoft in these “mockumentary” TV spots. I’ve become strangely addicted to them. Gates can’t act but neither can Seinfeld so he’s a good ‘straight guy’ to Jerry’s nonsense. I don’t see the first two instalments selling more copies of Vista but I’m sure they’re setting us up for the hard sell down the track. See for yourself...
UPDATE: A very nervous Microsoft has fired the ad agency and pulled the pin on the Bill & Jerry Show. These two instalments now stand alone as the first half of a joke that never made it to the punch-line. I’ll miss them.
Which brings me to their latest $300 million ad campaign staring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. I admire Bill Gates. He’s probably the only person ever to get the better of Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs by making him hand Microsoft the keys to the Mac OS code, which hey copied and... well... the rest is history. He’s a generous man too with a social conscience. But what I like most about Gates and what this campaign demonstrates is that he doesn’t take himself too seriously. Try saying that about Steve Jobs!
Just as Jobs is the face of Apple, McCann Erickson are right in using Gates as the face of Microsoft in these “mockumentary” TV spots. I’ve become strangely addicted to them. Gates can’t act but neither can Seinfeld so he’s a good ‘straight guy’ to Jerry’s nonsense. I don’t see the first two instalments selling more copies of Vista but I’m sure they’re setting us up for the hard sell down the track. See for yourself...
UPDATE: A very nervous Microsoft has fired the ad agency and pulled the pin on the Bill & Jerry Show. These two instalments now stand alone as the first half of a joke that never made it to the punch-line. I’ll miss them.
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