Why Jerry Seinfeld will be the perfect Windows Vista pitch man
According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft has hired none other than Jerry Seinfeld to appear in a series of ads meant to counter the popular “Get a Mac” ads Apple has run for the past few years. Jerry’s $300 million campaign is rumored to feature Bill Gates in some way, and focus on the tagline “Windows, not Walls“.
The right man for the job
At first, Jerry Seinfeld may seem like an odd (and expensive) choice for Microsoft’s new Vista ad campaign, but if you stop to think about it, it makes total sense. For 9 seasons, Seinfeld was the star of a show “about nothing”. In these new Microsoft ads, while the time limit has changed to a 30 second spot from of a 30 minute sitcom, Jerry must still “talk about nothing”, in this case, Windows Vista.
The funny thing is Jerry has been known for years to be a devout Mac user, so any and all credibility behind the campaign is pretty much gone from the start. I would appear the rumored $300 million being thrown around for the ads might have more to do with Jerry’s going over to the dark side than any true love of Vista. “Not that there’s anything wrong with it”. For $300 million I would appear in an anti-cheeseball ad campaign. (Well, maybe $400 million.)
Not to sound like a curmudgeon, but I’m pretty sure the $300 million is the cost that Microsoft is paying for the entire campaign, which includes expensive media buys, creative development, and all the other costs associated with a full force media blitz. My guess is that Seinfeld himself gets a small piece of that pie. Mmmmmm. Pie.
Apparently Jerry’s getting $10m for the job.
It says he’ll appear WITH Bill Gates – maybe they’re doing a “Hi, I’m a Mac” (Jerry) and “I’m a PC” (Bill Gates) kinda ad. Only this time Bill Gates’ gonna trash talk the Mac! Lol! 🙂
Well Jerry can always say he runs Vista through bootcamp so he goes both ways, not that there is anything wrong with that.
I don’t think the average PC owner knows about Jerry Seinfeld being a Mac user.
All they know is that a Mac is the more pricey of the two Deer Hunter machines.
“I’m a Mac.”
“And I’m a PC, not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
Another bad idea from MS. A general rule about getting a celebrity to pitch your product is to make sure that the said celebrity is at the very lease NOT a user of your competitors product.
Mistake number 2: Jerry has stopped being funny something like 10 years ago.
Mistake number 3: MS, as the overwhelming industry leader, should not be imitating its competitors. When you are the first you need to be setting new standards rather than mimicking what those who are trying to catch up to you are doing.
Mistake number 4: Microsofit is spending $300 million on a campaign that will generate a nice amount of publicity for, you guessed it, Apple. Everyone knows that this campaign is a response to the Apple campaign. So whenever someone (in the Media/consumers/etc) sees or talks about MS’s new campaign, they will also mention Apple. I can see the conversation going like this:
“Hey, did you see the new MS ad.”
“Yeah, its funny but not as funny as the Mac ones.” Free publicity for Apple.
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
— Abraham Lincoln, (attributed)
here’s to the crazy ones…
Jerry gets $3M and Bill gets $297M to appear in the commercial?