Microsoft To Announce Jerry Seinfeld Ads Cancelled 587
An anonymous reader writes "Valleywag says the Jerry Seinfeld ads are over — In a phone call, Frank Shaw confirms that Microsoft is not going on with Seinfeld, and echoes his underlings' spin that the move was planned. There is the 'potential to do other things' with Seinfeld, which Shaw says is still 'possible.' He adds: 'People would have been happier if everyone loved the ads, but this was not unexpected.'"
People would have been happier? (Score:5, Insightful)
As if anyone understood the ad at all, let alone were happy about it.
Re:Penny Arcade called it (Score:4, Insightful)
One can only hope we've gotten smarter, we Americans, since the Seinfeld era... Some of his shows were good and his standup was brilliant but really the majority of shows seemed to be the most retarded things on television at the time. It was sort of like how I've never seen a single episode of Friends and yet, while the show was running, I knew everything that was going on because of the commercials.
The ads weren't that great. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Penny Arcade called it (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I enjoyed them! (Score:5, Insightful)
Gates and Seinfeld.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I enjoyed them! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The ads were perfect for Vista (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, Ubuntu really blew me away:
- Every time an update occurs, it takes more and more space on my hard disk, and the boot screen is filled with 100 versions of linux kernels.
- It took me one week to get my wifi card to work properly with wpa, with all the incomplete/outdated documentation available. Eventually, I found, by chance, a message on a forum.
- After a kernel update, my wifi card couldn't work anymore. My card is not an alien from another planet. It is a well-known card model.
- So I went back to the older kernel. What happened? Nautilus didn't work anymore!
- A certain indexation service (I forgot its name) runs regularly. Then my computer does not respond anymore. It's a modern computer (AMD64 quad-core with 3 Gb of RAM).
I am a software engineer for a living, but when I use my system, I expect it to run out-of-the-box,
I want to feel like the base customer, not the software engineer.
Re:Penny Arcade called it (Score:5, Insightful)
Glad the ads are dead. There's "cool" surreal. (See: Rutger Hauer Guinness commercials [youtube.com] in the late 80's and early 90's) Then there is utterly retarded. That was these.
I never got "Seinfeld" either. I saw a few episodes and it was okay I guess, but I never understood why it became so huge as it wasn't that funny. "No soup for you." Indeed.
Give me "Larry Sanders" any day over that.
Re:I enjoyed them! (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm rather disappointed by this news. The first ad had me scratching my head, but I thought the second one was rather funny and I was interested to see where, if anywhere, they were going to go with it. They sucked as advertisements, and I know for damn sure they weren't going to have me wiping my Debian install any time soon, but none the less, I enjoyed watching them.
Spooked by the commentators... tsk tsk tsk (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll repeat that: Surely they would have known that this brand campaign would need TIME and COMMITMENT to have a payoff!
Maybe at least it's not too late...
Re:George Orwell and Grammar! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Not unexpected" isn't actually the same thing as "expected", though. The former is closer to "we saw that it could happen".
Put another way, on the scale from "unexpected", through "unsure" to "expected", the former includes everything but the left end, while the latter is only the right end.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Mind Bogglingly Bad (Score:5, Insightful)
I saw the awful Gates & Seinfeld commercial last night where Gates does the Robot, and commented to my wife that Microsoft must have the lowest advertising ROI of all time. It's mind boggling that a company with that much money could do so poorly with their advertising campaigns. They can certainly afford to do better, so why don't they?
It's surprising that Crispin Porter is their agency, since they're about the highest rated in the advertising game. Perhaps it's something about Microsoft that exudes a lameness that overwhelms all else.
My two cents. (Score:4, Insightful)
The commercials seem to be about nothing. We don't learn about the product. I don't get how this was suppose to be helpful to Microsoft.
I think a better idea, for a gimmick, would be, "Try Windows Vista. If you don't like it after 30 days, we'll buy you a copy of Ubuntu."
(Yes, I'm trying for humour here.)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Ads Sucked (Score:5, Insightful)
I must say this a hundred times a year.
The largest road in London (the M25 motorway that circles the entire city and has more cars on it than any other road in the UK) has a large warehouse by the side of it (Jct 27/28 if memory serves) which has, in twenty-foot-high letters:
Sericol. More than ink. Solutions.
written on it. What the hell do they sell? *Do* they in fact sell ink? Do they offer "ink solutions"? (whatever the hell they are) Do they sell printing? Do they process squid? I have no bloody idea. What if I just wanted ink? Sod it. It's easier to phone someone else.
About once a week, I'll see a building, advertisment or painted vehicle which is supposed to be drawing my attention to a company, product, or service and doesn't tell me what those products are. These are all examples that I've seen and which are complete copies of an advert, or sign on a van. Some of the product names have been changed because they were SO memorable that I can't remember the exact wording, website, logo etc.
Fred's Services Ltd. Call 0800XXXXXXX. (Services FOR WHAT? And they even paid to have a freefone number)
Adventis. www.adventis.com (I made up the name/website)
Patricks - Solutions for the modern world. (no services, no phone number, no website, nothing.)
(Funny logo) - Ring 08XXXXXXXXX for our full range of services. (no, you bloody print them on the advert, or at least give me a vague idea).
Re:People would have been happier? (Score:2, Insightful)
nice for a company to be branded pointless in peoples' minds
Let me correct you there... (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you'll find that the majority of Linux people on here aren't fanbois but computer techies who treat Linux as a useful tool to get stuff done in, just like any other OS.
I'm afraid that you are projecting a bit there. At least I hope that you are projecting and not just painting it pink. [wikipedia.org]
Let us disregard for a moment that this is a topic where people ridicule Microsoft.
Take a look at the front page. The left side.
Do you see a Microsoft section? How 'bout Apple? Linux?
Now... take a look at this post's icon. Bill Gates as a Borg.
Apple and Linux meanwhile have their regular logos.
This is Slashdot.
It is a social norm to be a Linux fanboy and to a lesser extent an Apple fanboy while hating Microsoft, Bill Gates and everything they stand for.
And the best part is - management promotes such behavior.
Microsoft and Gates are evil, Apple is shiny and Linux is cute.
Its not a law (yet) but its a very good idea to keep in mind if you like posting above 0 level.
Nothing kills karma faster than going to a Apple or Linux topic and suggesting that "it ain't that great".
Sometimes, just asking is there something LIKE THAT which is talked about in the post can get you bad karma.
This is Slashdot.
Wow... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Microsoft To Announce Jerry Seinfeld Ads Cancelled "
Even Digg managed to find a more appropriate headline:
"Microsoft's New Ad:Seinfeld and Gates out, Hodgman Lookalike"
linking to the NYTimes article "Echoing the Campaign of a Rival, Microsoft Aims to Redefine 'I'm a PC'"
To those who actually think the Gates/Seinfeld got canceled: the commercials played for one week each. Now in the third week and today we get the 'new' style. Do you honestly think they scrambled to get something done within a week?
I know the Slashdot crowd hates MS with a passion but don't let your hate cloud your judgement.
Re:People would have been happier? (Score:5, Insightful)
And Microsoft has never been bad in marketing.
There's been a few disasters in Microsoft marketing in the past, but their track record is usually rather successful. These short series of ads were a failure, I've heard one person ask me "Is that supposed to be their rebuttal against Apple?", and she uses Windows!
Well, they're trying to get their "Windows Mojave" thing to succeed.... but I admit, I don't really see how they can repair damages of Windows Vista purely in marketing.
Re:The ads weren't that great. (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Penny Arcade called it (Score:4, Insightful)
What blows my mind is the following statement...
"People would have been happier if everyone loved the ads, but this was not unexpected."
I worked as IT for a major marketing company making and selling TV ad's so I got to see lots of stuff as well as listen in on a lot of conversations and learn the "biz" so to speak...
What blows my mind is what raging idiot at Microsoft green lighted this ad campaign? they KNEW that it was a flop from the above statement. yet they still spend the outrageous cash to have written and shoot and print those horrid commercials? Holy crap do they also wallpaper the walls at Microsoft with 100 bills just before they repaint them so they can figure out how to waste money even faster?
Those commercials had to have cost at LEAST $200,000 each without airtime. just production costs. If you used actors it would have went faster but I guarantee they had to re shoot several times and be on the set for 2 or more days to shoot each 30 second spot because of Bill being a non actor.
Hey Microsoft want a advertising campaign that will make everyone love vista? Give the Vista Home edition away to EVERYONE. make it free as a downloadable ISO without support on your website and overnight everyone will love you.
Why is it so hard for those morons at microsoft management to figure this out?
Re:Penny Arcade called it (Score:5, Insightful)
And the thing is....someone, probably multiple people in a committee...actually thought these commercials were a GOOD idea!! I mean, even a company with the assets MS has doesn't just throw millions of dollars around on ads without a lot of people approving this.
Was there not a single, normal person that saw these say said...WTF?
Someone in charge of marketing at MS really needs to be encouraged to find greener pastures at another company over this one....
Larry David (Score:5, Insightful)
If they wanted to make commercials in the vein of Seinfeld, they should have hired Larry David. He seems to have been the real genius behind that series.
Did anyone actually *watch* Seinfeld? (Score:5, Insightful)
The show was not about "nothing", as joked about in some episodes, it was about four *extremely* *unlikeable* people *doing* nothing.
The last episode was the clue-by-four to the head for all those viewers who didn't get it; they bring back all the people whose lives had been casually wrecked by the main characters, and in the end (SPOILER ALERT, if you care), they end up all locked in a cell, the ultimate punishment that they have to spend their time together.
And from this Microsoft thought they could improve their branding? If anything, it's somehow appropriate, Microsoft is the company that casually wrecks your (digital) life.
Re:Penny Arcade called it (Score:3, Insightful)
One can only hope we've gotten smarter, we Americans, since the Seinfeld era... Some of his shows were good and his standup was brilliant but really the majority of shows seemed to be the most retarded things on television at the time. It was sort of like how I've never seen a single episode of Friends and yet, while the show was running, I knew everything that was going on because of the commercials.
I think you missed the point of the retardedness. Point was they were poking fun at everyday life. If you couldnt see that you should probably ask yourself who in fact is the retard here?
Re:The ads weren't that great. (Score:5, Insightful)
If it was supposed to compete with Apple's Mac vs. PC ads, which many people apparently find comical and true
Y'know I've never been a fan of negative ad campaigns. If the best thing you can say about your product is "we don't suck as much as the other guy" I'm probably not going to bother switching.
Re:The ads weren't that great. (Score:3, Insightful)
presumably they have some, but it's generally considered a good idea to tell the marketing guys what they are before they start designing the ads
I looked at the ads and concluded that they'd got a bunch of marketing guys who had no clue what they were supposed to be selling and gave them a *lot* of glue to sniff...
Re:I enjoyed them! (Score:4, Insightful)
PRECISELY. Now, Microsoft is perfectly poised to come out with the "real" advertising campaign with the pitch (now that they've got everyone's attention). I'm surprised more people don't see this.
Re:People would have been happier? (Score:2, Insightful)
I actually thought the ads were hilarious. I loved them. Sure they had nothing to do with anything (let alone MS or the PC), but that is what makes Seinfeld, Seinfeld.
I for one am sad to see them go.
Re:Penny Arcade called it (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps Microsoft should stop hiring yes-men for those committees :P.
Re:Penny Arcade called it (Score:5, Insightful)
I can think of two possibilities.
1. They're lying when they said this was expected. That's the "oh, you poor dumb saps" explanation.
2. Someone at their ad agency thought it would be a great idea, and by the time anyone realized what a train wreck it was going to be, it had gathered too much steam to stop. By the time they released it, probably most of the people involved thought, "well... look on the bright side! It might not suck too bad! It might even be 'so bad it's good'!"
Re:Penny Arcade called it (Score:5, Insightful)
And the thing is....someone, probably multiple people in a committee...actually thought these commercials were a GOOD idea!!
Probably the same committee that thought Vista was a good idea.
Re:Penny Arcade called it (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey Microsoft want a advertising campaign that will make everyone love vista? Give the Vista Home edition away to EVERYONE. make it free as a downloadable ISO without support on your website and overnight everyone will love you.
What percentage of people in the world do you think even know what a downloadable ISO is? It seems that most people who know what it is and would know how to use it are the same people who probably grabbed a pirated version online already anyway. And then complained that they don't like it.
Re:Penny Arcade called it (Score:5, Insightful)
And the thing is....someone, probably multiple people in a committee...actually thought these commercials were a GOOD idea!!
Actually I imagine the truth was simpler than that. There was probably a boardroom of people who were each unwilling to admit that they didn't understand these very esoteric ads. Each one outwardly proclaimed them "brilliant", while inwardly they had no idea what was going on. Nobody was willing to point out that the emperor had no clothes.
Re:Penny Arcade called it (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I enjoyed them! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not for Microsoft. I don't think product awareness is much of a need for Microsoft Windows. What they were trying to accomplish was to change their brand image, to make themselves appear "cool". They failed miserably. What a massive waste of money.
Re:Penny Arcade called it (Score:3, Insightful)
I strangely suspect that all the bright minds in charge of advertising at MS have AS.
I think they got what they wanted.... press! (Score:4, Insightful)
What blows my mind is what raging idiot at Microsoft green lighted this ad campaign? they KNEW that it was a flop from the above statement. yet they still spend the outrageous cash to have written and shoot and print those horrid commercials? Holy crap do they also wallpaper the walls at Microsoft with 100 bills just before they repaint them so they can figure out how to waste money even faster?
Hmm... well, there HAS been a lot of discussion about these terrible commercials. Now there is discussion about them being cancelled.
Would we have given them this much attention otherwise? Maybe the intent was exactly that, to raise the "WTF" and to get people to speculate what they meant. They just failed, and nobody really cared all that much.
Re:The ads weren't that great. (Score:4, Insightful)
You can be comparative without being negative. The Mac vs. PC ads do discuss PCs and sometimes point out PCs weaknesses, but a number of the ones I've seen also highlight what Apple has done to improve on the PC design (the magnetic laptop cords to mind).
Re:Penny Arcade called it (Score:4, Insightful)
..what raging idiot at Microsoft green lighted this ad campaign..
Probably the same person who decided lyrics containing, "you'd make a grown man cryyyyy" would be a good theme song for their product. At least it was truth in advertising, I'll give them that.
Re:I enjoyed them! (Score:3, Insightful)
To be fair, it's not exactly unexpected that people would talk about the ads on a slashdot discussion centering around those ads.
Nobody outside of slashdot is discussing them more than a few seconds after they air. They really don't have anyone's attention.
Re:People would have been happier? (Score:3, Insightful)
"And to replace them with a ripoff of the "Mac VS PC" commercials is just sad. It'll just make them look a day late,a dollar short,and unable to do anything but rip off the Mac."
That my friend is called honesty in advertising.
Re:Penny Arcade called it (Score:1, Insightful)
Seinfeld poked fun of everyday life of White, Upper Middleclass, Living in New York City, people who have questionable morals. I watched siendfeld and I know no one who's life is even remotly like that, even in a non exadurated form. The latest add shows what they think of the real average family, a bunch of mizerable people who are boring and a bunch of bumpkins.
Durring the 90's people not necessarly stupid, but found it more funny, as it was more optimistic times, and everyone felt that they could be just one lucky investment in a IPO away from living the trendy NYC life style. However today we are a more consertive people (in the terms of consertive that is not political). We don't expect or plan for that life style we want prefer a more settled lifestyle, as we relize that the Siendfield life style in real life would often do more harm then good. I am supprised that half of the characters didn't get untreatible STDs, or the fact when they didn't have a job they can still aford rent for a New York City appartment. How quickly they can be some Lowly assistant, to fired for their own misconduct, to rehired as some higher paying prestegious job. I think the realism of everyday life reality has changed in american culture. The 1990's Gen X started to get a foot in by the 2000's gen X owns the world. Gen X realized that this type of life isn't as glamerious as siendfield made it.
Re:The ads weren't that great. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, you often don't vote because you are a lazy ass.
You can look up voting records, history, etc...
Stop making these pathetic excuses for not wanting tom get up off your ass.
Re:Penny Arcade called it (Score:3, Insightful)
I donno. I sort of found the ads delightful. And I'm absolutely certain that's the first time I've been able to call a Microsoft offering delightful.
Maybe there's been so much of a "backlash" on the blogosphere that other equally delighted nerds have been reluctant to speak out, but I thought they were great ads. Microsoft has gazallions of dollars, and if more of those dollars were spent producing delightful things, we might begin to loathe them less.
On a related note, as someone who works in advertising - these commercials feel much more like the result of a creative director gone wild than some CEO at Microsoft. Maybe an effort to counter the wildly popular Mac ads. They failed to realize that the key ingredient was Jon Hodgman.
Re:Penny Arcade called it (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider:
1. The ads are just plain freaky. It's hard to imagine any focus group reaction other than possible mild laughter and "WTF?" which means that middle managers would be too scared for their jobs to approve them. The approval for these ads had to come from a top executive.
2. The message is oddly mixed regarding Microsoft itself. The idea is that there's some new stuff on the horizon that will solve all the problems the current stuff has. Why pay to advertise that your current stuff has problems?
3. Bill Gates is prominently featured throughout--the ads focus most of their attention on him. From the 70s drivers license photo to the Conquistadors to reading the story about programming, it's all about showing us who Gates is (or wants to be).
4. If I remember correctly, the word "Microsoft" does not appear - either spoken or as text - anywhere in the ad. The only reference to Microsoft is the Windows logo.
So: The purpose of these ads is to rehabilitate Bill Gates' image as he exits Microsoft and starts his new career as a philanthropist. The middle managers responsible for marketing and communications probably argued against it because it goes against any possible message they might want to convey. But Bill Gates gets what he wants.
These same middle managers are then put on the spot to answer questions about the thing. "This reaction was not unexpected" means "we knew it sucked but we were overruled." And "People would have been happier if everyone loved the ads" means "Gates now realizes it was a mistake and blames us, even though we told him so."
Plausible?
Re:Penny Arcade called it (Score:5, Insightful)
What's sad is when certain fans attribute a completely natural difference in taste to some kind of defect.
Re:Seinfeld plays opposite losers (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem of course is that I don't know exactly what annoys me about the Seinfeld characters.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Penny Arcade called it (Score:3, Insightful)
I guarantee they had to re shoot several times and be on the set for 2 or more days to shoot each 30 second spot because of Bill being a non actor.
Clearly you've never seen him speak at a conference. Anyone who can stand up and tell you with a straight face VISTA is great is one fine actor.