They are still doing the ads, they are just dropping Seinfeld. That sounds like spin to me, considering what they paid him. What follows is from the New York Times...
Echoing the Campaign of a Rival, Microsoft Aims to Redefine ‘I’m a PC’
RELAX, computer users, after only two weeks Microsoft
will stop teasing you as the company begins the next phase of an
ambitious — and risky — $300 million campaign intended to make over its
tarnished image.
The campaign, which begins Thursday and carries the theme “Windows.
Life without walls,” will move away from the enigmatic teaser
commercials that featured Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld
in offbeat conversations about shopping, shoes, suburbia and the
potential of computing to improve life. The teaser ads have generated
considerable discussion since they started on Sept. 4, not all of it
positive.
What follows is an audacious embrace of the disdainful label that Apple, Microsoft’s rival, has gleefully — and successfully — affixed onto users of Microsoft products: “I’m a PC.”
One new Microsoft commercial even begins with a company engineer who
resembles John Hodgman, the comedian portraying the loser PC character
in the Apple campaign. “Hello, I’m a PC,” the engineer says, echoing
Mr. Hodgman’s recurring line, “and I’ve been made into a stereotype.”
The strategy to use the Apple attack as the basis for a
counterstrike is typical for the agency behind the campaign, Crispin
Porter & Bogusky.
Crispin Porter, part of MDC Partners, relishes efforts to transform
perceived negatives into positives. For another client, Burger King,
the calorie-stuffed menu is portrayed to a target audience of young men
as a rebellious personal choice to “Have it your way.”
Mr. Gates makes a cameo appearance in the new Microsoft spots, along
with celebrities like the actress Eva Longoria, the author Deepak Chopra and the singer Pharrell Williams. (Mr. Seinfeld is gone, at least for now.)
But the stars are everyday PC users, from scientists and fashion
designers to shark hunters and teachers, all of whom affirm, in
fast-paced, upbeat vignettes, their pride in using the computers that
run on Microsoft operating systems and software.
Among them are more than 60 Microsoft employees, who are accompanied in the ads by e-mail addresses — even Mr. Gates’s (bill@windows.com).
Apple executives have been “using a lot of their money to
de-position our brand and tell people what we stand for,” said David
Webster, general manager for brand marketing at Microsoft in Redmond,
Wash.
“They’ve made a caricature out of the PC,” he added, which was unacceptable because “you always want to own your own story.”
The campaign illustrates “a strong desire” among Microsoft managers
“to take back that narrative,” Mr. Webster said, and “have a
conversation about the real PC.”
A giant advertiser responding to the disparagement of a smaller
rival can be fraught with peril. Consumers may see it as a validation
of the claims, or even bullying. On the other hand, ignoring the taunts
can damage images and sales.
In the car-rental wars, the market leader, Hertz, long kept silent
about a cheeky Avis campaign that proclaimed: “We’re No. 2. We try
harder.” But after Avis revenue grew robustly, Hertz shot back: “For
years, Avis has been telling you Hertz is No. 1. Now we’re going to
tell you why.”
Similarly, Coca-Cola said nothing as Pepsi-Cola
challenged its hegemony in the cola category — until it turned
tradition upside-down in 1985 by bringing out New Coke, with a more
Pepsi-like taste. Roger A. Enrico,
who was in charge of the PepsiCo beverage business, celebrated by
co-writing a book titled “The Other Guy Blinked: How Pepsi Won the Cola
Wars.”
Riffing on the Apple ads is “a smart way of changing the dialogue,” Mr. Webster said, “without taking them through the mud.”
Charles Rosen, chief executive at Amalgamated, an agency in New York
that specializes in what he calls “cultural branding” for clients like
Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, said it made sense for Microsoft to engage
Apple.
Through its campaign, which mocks the PC as it celebrates the
Macintosh, “Apple represents the ideology of Silicon Valley, taking on
big business as in Microsoft,” Mr. Rosen said.
That gives Apple “badge value, identity value,” he added, among consumers who prize brands they deem populist.
Trying to gain more firepower for ads by generating talk in the
popular culture is another tactic of Crispin Porter’s. For example,
commercials for Volkswagen became the subject of considerable buzz
because they showed something rarely depicted in auto advertising:
sudden crashes.
That was what the two-week Microsoft teaser campaign accomplished, according to companies that track discussions about brands.
At first, “the ads were ambiguous and confounding to some,” said Ted
Marzilli, senior vice president and general manager of the brand group
at the New York office of YouGovPolimetrix, a research company, but as
they continued they helped improve perceptions about Microsoft.
On Sept. 4, when the teaser ads started, the “buzz” about Microsoft
was 25 percent positive and 13 percent negative, Mr. Marzilli said, and
by Tuesday it was 28 percent positive and 8 percent negative. Microsoft
“has been beat up pretty badly by the Apple advertisements in the last
six months,” he said. “These are strong numbers, good numbers, for
Microsoft.”
Another research company, Zeta Interactive, using what it calls its
Relevant Noise tool to mine places online like blogs and message boards
for brand conversations, found what was described as overwhelmingly
positive buzz surrounding Microsoft from Sept. 3 through Monday.
Of the posts analyzed by Relevant Noise during that stage of the
teaser campaign, 63 percent were characterized as positive and 37
percent as negative.
“It did what it needed to do,” said Rob Reilly, partner and
co-executive creative director at Crispin Porter in Boulder, Colo., and
Miami. “People who got it, got it.”
To segue from the teaser ads to the actual campaign, he added, the
phrase “I’m a PC” will serve to “set up the notion the real PC is not
necessarily who we’ve been portrayed as” in the Apple ads.
“You can ignore it,” Mr. Reilly said of the Apple campaign, “or you
can find a clever way to embrace it, to hug it to death, to turn it to
your advantage.”
The celebration of PC users is intended to show them “connected to
this community,” he added, “of people who are creative, who are
passionate.”
As for the risks of responding to a smaller competitor, “Apple has
done a tremendous job marketing their products,” Mr. Reilly said, so “I
don’t know if it’s David versus Goliath anymore.”
The theme of “Life without walls” was the concept for the Microsoft
campaign “from the beginning,” he added, because it declares “that the
goal of Windows is to help remove the walls in your life, now and in
the future.”
In addition to commercials on television shows like “Grey’s Anatomy”
on Thursday, ads will appear in local and national newspapers in
addition to new content added to the windows.com Web site, which will be reachable from the microsite lifewithoutwalls.com.
Coming magazine and outdoor ads focus on how Windows can be used for mobile devices, TV sets and laptops along with PCs.
Beginning on Thursday night, visitors to windows.com will be able to
upload video clips and photographs demonstrating how they, too, are
PCs. Some photos will be chosen to appear on electronic signs in Times
Square from Friday through Oct. 13 and others will be chosen for use in
Microsoft banner ads.
“This is just the beginning, the first phase of the campaign,” said
Mich Mathews, senior vice president for marketing at Microsoft. “We’re
on a journey to reposition the PC.”
“The conventional wisdom may be, ‘Hey this is motivated by Apple,’ ”
she added, “but there has been a re-engineering of Microsoft.”
Ms. Mathews listed several steps to improve the consumer perception
of Windows, which has been tarnished by problems with the Vista
operating systems. Among them are the hiring by Microsoft of hundreds
of trained employees, or Windows gurus, to work at retailers like Best Buy and Circuit City.
As for Mr. Seinfeld, will he return at some point?
“Jerry is a friend of the agency and Microsoft,” Mr. Reilly of
Crispin Porter said, adding in a sly allusion to Brand X, “You like to
keep your friends close — and your enemies closer.”