Source: 
Microsoft Corp., weary of being cast as a stodgy oldster by Apple Inc.’s advertising, is turning for help to Jerry Seinfeld.
The software giant’s new $300 million advertising campaign, devised by a newly hired ad agency, has been closely guarded. But Mr. Seinfeld will be one of the key celebrity pitchmen, say people close to the situation. He will appear with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates in ads and receive about $10 million for the work, they say.
The new ad effort is expected to use some variation of the slogan “Windows, Not Walls,” according to several people familiar with the matter. Those people say the point is to stress breaking down barriers that prevent people and ideas from connecting. The campaign, said to debut Sept. 4, is one of the largest in the company’s history.
The attempted image overhaul comes as Microsoft executives privately acknowledge that Windows — the company’s most important brand — has grown stale and has been battered by Apple’s “Mac vs. PC” ads. Those ads, created by Omnicom Group Inc.’s TBWA/Chiat/Day, feature a nerdy PC guy getting upstaged by a hip Mac counterpart.
Microsoft’s immediate goal is to reverse the negative public perception of Windows Vista, the latest version of the company’s personal-computer operating system. Windows is Microsoft’s largest generator of profit and revenue, accounting for 28% of the company’s revenue of $60.4 billion in the year ended June 30.
The software has sold well, and Microsoft retains an overwhelming share of the market for operating system software over Apple. But Apple’s computer sales have been rising, and Vista is dogged by the notion that it has technical shortcomings and is hard to use. Apple’s latest Mac vs. PC ads take swipes at Vista. Microsoft says early problems with Vista have been largely alleviated.
[AP Photos]
How about reversing the negative public perception of Vista by putting out something that isn’t plagued with bugs, incompatibilities and crippled by DRM?
Seinfeld? Promoting Windows?
Kinda goes against the grain when his self-titled show featured several generations of Apple computers, from a classic Mac to the cool-lookin’ (for it’s time) 20th Anniversary Mac.
Still, as a Seinfeld (and Apple) fanboy, I’d be interesting what they come up with.
It’s not that Vista is hard to use – I got stuck with it on a company laptop for a week once and didn’t find the interface significantly different from XP – it was, however, significantly slower than XP, and I think it BSoD’d on my three times in that week. Being a company laptop, I wasn’t about to do anything that might have run afoul of the DRM features or explose other incompatibilities.
What *is* more difficult to use are the versions of IE and the various office programs that came with it. No file/edit/etc menus? Don’t mess with menu layouts that have been standard since… well, always (Win 3.1, I believe).
Hey… It’s a paycheck. For $10 M I would paint myself with a windows logo and stand naked in the middle of traffic in every city in the country……
Come to think of it…. APPLE should pay me to do that. I’m sure it would be more effective to keep people FROM buying MS Products.
I can see it now. The customer reaches for Vista and falls to the floor screaming, “Oh GOD!… The Image Just Won’t Go Away…!!!”
This would have been a great move ten years ago when Seinfeld was still on the air and hot. Back when Microsoft was king of the hill; even though Windows 98 was a piece of crap, this would have been smart marketing
Today this is perfect fodder for an Apple commercial.
“I’m a PC”
“I’m a Mac – What’s new PC?”
“We just hired a comedian who used to popular ten years ago, like the PC. He used to be cutting edge, like the PC’. Now he off the air, he was dating a seventeen year old for a while, but he did play a Bee in a cartoon. He’s going to make us really hot again – yea.”