Jerry Seinfeld's Microsoft Ad Premieres (VIDEO)

During NBC's NFL broadcast Thursday night of the Giants v. the Redskins the new Microsoft ad featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates debuted. Last month news broke Seinfeld would be participating in the $300 million campaign for a fee of about $10 million.

Watch:

Comments

[kalapa]

"It works for... Starbucks,"

Not a good example. Remember? It's a sinking brand right now.

[carlgt1]

I have a PhD in Computer Science, and it's quite simple:

Microsoft == McCain
Apple == Obama

[nonobjective]

Microsoft/Apple = McCain. They are both incredibly closed source, commit random acts of anti-trust weekly, and stifle competition. Please don't insult Obama.

[provgrays]

Did you need to present your academic credentials to come with that?

I have an M.A. in English and who cares?

[readyfornewleadership]

MA in Liberal Arts and also MS in Accounting. use a PC but am jealous of my children who of course use MACs

[jckamaraj]

please don't insult our intelligence. now we will never know whom do you hate or love. both companies are very very very monopolistic, closed source, try to squash any competition with no mercy. so if you don't like both obama and mccain then your comparision does make sense

[SanityForOnce]

One big difference.

One company makes competent products, the other does not.

[jdj81]

Apple is closed source? For much of their software, yes, but that's a little misleading out of hand. The core of their OS is open source (Darwin). Their HTML rendering engine is open source (WebKit) and widely praised. Their no-configuration network protocol is open source (Bonjour). They manage lots of other significant open source projects as well, such as launchd, X11, kerberos, CUPS, etc. And besides that, they pre-load the OS with tons and tons of open source software--way too much to list.

So while Apple is indeed a ruthless business that's always doing what's in its best interest (which is how business works, really), to insult them as closed source without qualification is unfair. They are quite supportive of the OSS community. I use Linux and have directly benefited from several Apple OSS projects.

[ProFromOre]

How can you make that analogy, I've been reading through this thread & I've come to the conclusion the Mac marketing philosophy and to a certain extent the hard-corps, bitter Mac users are more like Repubs. Attacking, complaining about the competition, while promoting an over-hyped, under-performing product.

Hmm, why would you compare as you did. Obama would be more equivalent to MS, much more popular, not obsessed with tearing down and attacking the competition. While Apple is older and more fringe supported, with a 'campaign' of attack the competition and tear it down, while spinning about their product the entire time.

I'd be curious to hear you thinking on your analogy. Unless you have one those alternative PhD's, that stand for Pile it Higher... (I'm joking - I'm a 'recovering' academe, myself)

[nonobjective]

This is a small piece of a long term ad campaign. Not a campaign about getting people to buy a product (Vista;) it's about changing people's perception about a brand (Microsoft) as a whole.

Selling a single product is a lot easier and cheaper than selling an entire brand... at least in the beginning. But once you've successfully sold a subset of the market on the brand, they'll buy just about any product you make. It works for Urban Outfitters, Starbucks, Apple, et. al. - and Microsoft is gambling 300 million dollars it will work for them.

[iambusto]

I am sick and tired of naysayers bashing on Microsoft for reasons unwarranted. Sure, if you think Apple ads are funny and Apple has a more exciting presence (????) than Microsoft go right ahead. Just dont compare the two as companies.

1) Microsoft is in way better business than Apple. Even with apple's tremendous growth in last few years do yourself a favor. Do a search in any financial websites (morningstar for one) and check out last 10 years Net Margin, Gross Margin, EBT Margin, ROA, ROE ...basically whatever metric you choose.

MSFT blows away AAPL....ok. Yes MSFT is not going to grow as much as AAPL because it has a much bigger base.

2) MSFT has a "wide" moat compared to "narrow" moat of Apple.
3) its corporate governance is better than any other tech company (including Apple). if you remember,
MSFT was the first big tech company to start expensing options.
Currently high level management dont even get options. They get "restricted stock" instead of options. all in all, MSFT has a stellar corporate governance.
--------------------------
bottom line, go ahead and rag on MSFT for being a fuddy duddy company and having boring ads. But it still beats a lot of flash in the pan tech companies out there.

[asus389]

Yeah but stock analysis aside their products, particularly Windows, are just "good enough". Well after years of dealing with "good enough" - Windows crashes, incoherent error messages, poor UI design, poor software quality, and now Vista which is really feature wise not all that different than XP but uses 400% more resources to do the same thing - people are fed up. Macs offer a great alternative and they don't suffer from nearly as may problems as Windows machines do. Macs have always been a better product -easier to use, more reliable in most cases, etc... , Windows just had more software. But for 99% percent of consumers, this really doesn't matter. The rise of the internet saw the migration of most "software/services" to the Web, so a Mac works just as well. Plus Apple over the past 5 years has focused its efforts on developing easy to use software for things that people really want to do with their computers such as manage music, photos, make movies, etc... And finally, Apple moved to intel processors which gives users who have a few Windows apps they can't let go of the option to run them in Windows at native speed.

I'm no Mac zealot, but lately, Apple has been way more focused on making great products than Microsoft. Their value proposition, espeically for consumers, is very compelling. Its not just image they are selling. Macs really do "just work"...

[jckamaraj]

i use windows for normal operations and a linux zealot. so i guess i have no place in this discussion. when i heard reliability, quality i thought that you were talking about linux, i guess i'm not right

[Swift2]

Microsoft is a gigantic, uncreative pile of junk. It works on cheap computers. It works much harder at making sure your Windows in Genuine than it does protecting you from bad guys. It doesn't really do anything very well. The perfect representative of American business in the 21st century.

[iambusto]

if it was uncreative and a junk, how do you get billions of revenue per year !!

I will take uncreative junk over a company that is today's darling but could be gone in 12 years. Not saying apple would be gone in 12 years, but i would take a reliable cash cow over high-flyin darling any day.

sure Microsoft could improve a lot. but for years it just has become "fashionable" to bash Microsoft and tout every other tech company.

other companies would be lucky to have that kind of economic moat and economies of scale. !!

[ProFromOre]

That's the success of WIndows, it does work on 'cheap' hardware. But, by that gauge, it's no different than the Mac OS - they are the SAME hardware now. Or does the Mac OS only worked on high priced hardware?

The reason they have had to become obnoxious about the 'Genuine' issue is the inherent larcency and dis-respect for intellectual property in the world.

In 14yr of building computers & networks for people & micro-businesses, I concluded people were very willing to pay for hardware, they will grudgingly pay for software if they think they could get caught, they don't like to pay for labor and they avoid paying to train their employees or themselves to become more efficient, effective and PRODUCTIVE.

The US is still seems to be more impressed with sweat of the brow, tangible-result work than intellectual or digital results, even after a computer revolution in the world.

You'd be amazed at the people I'd had to 'chide' for suggesting they could 'share' software: pastors, cops, judges. What surprised me the most was the professions would insist they paid me adequately for my time: attorneys and financial planners/investment types.

[BG44]

For this, Jerry got 10 million? Not a very impressive start--hopefully the other ads will be better; there will be other ads right? This ad doesn't even mention Vista as far as I could tell---isn't that the purpose?

[vinnie3]

HUH? ....WHAT? ALL I HEARD WAS A ZIO SCUMFIELD

[AnnoyedCanuck]

This was supposed to make me buy software?

[polaris12]

Yeh, I didn't get the point. For those who don't know either of these guys - it could have been a shoe ad.

[proveit2me]

Ah. money well spent.

You think Kramer will do an ad for blackberry?

[NicoleAnon]

I doubt Michael Richards would promote anything with the word "black" in it...

[MoeSart]

Michael Richards was right when he confronted those hecklers. He was actually too nice to them.

America is full of wimps thanks to political correctness, that's all. If a heckler hits you, you hit back.

[nonobjective]

Oh Snap! I wanted to say it too...

[proveit2me]

that was my point, actually.

[aristoxenus]

This is THE great Microsoft ad . . . of 1997.

[Agentlady007]

Ohhhh, hahahahahahah!!!! This is so funny. Seinfeld: note to self: you look too much like my cousin Susan to make the other people in my life take you seriously. You are very normal though, and that's why I like you and find your comedy necessary. I feel you may be one and maybe alone, but connected to a common purpose to make people feel good - about themselves. . Also we both love grey flannel, or neat new things....and never laugh at our own jokes. You are rich but still the guy paying you to make the commercial is richer in cash. He invest's in the Euro w/ Warren Buffett. Love you. Say Hi to Great great great grandma. ( If we still know the family tree...I hope you are not in mine.)

[dartagnan]

I thought Bill Gates stole the show from Seinfeld.

[Tags]

They need a cartoon character, like, say, WinSkippy the Ferret or something.

[CGI]

Just like everything else Microsoft does, this doesn't do the job it was intended for, and is a complete waste of money.

[WRPrintz]

Ha! Windows did work....and thats why they replaced it with Vista...to meet your excellent summary of their mission statement.

[CGI]

HAHAHA

[GetoffMylawn]

They should have hired that kid from the Apple "I'm a Mac" commercials to play Bill Gates.

[PNK]

Their new one is funny, the PC guy is in a pizza box, funny.

[xhibi]

You guys are judging this add by using the Apple adds as scores and reference points. It doesn't work like that; Microsoft is making an ad for Microsoft, it's not auditioning for Apple or making an Apple-like ad.

It wasn't much to like in this particular add, but maybe that's an introduction and they're trying to harvest the celebrity factor of Gates and Seinfeld and associate it with Microsoft products.

[Rubyfoo]

Don't you think it would a good idea to field a strong entry coming out of the gate. Instead I feel embarrassed for Gates. Playing on his barely known propensity for bargains doesn't say a darn thing about Microsoft's corporate inclinations. Or if it does, my Ph.D. is insufficient (or overkill) to grok it.

[NicoleAnon]

And also I'm going to say what everyone is thinking but nobody will say...that little "dance" that Gates does in the end...was just really...how can I say this politely...not a good idea.