Bill and Jerry, Meet Paris and Nicole

Bill and Jerry are stepping into Paris and Nicole's shoes. (Albeit a larger, cheaper pair known as Conquistadors.)

The second installment of the new Windows campaign by ad shop Crispin Porter + Bogusky is like The Simple Life for the middle aged. But rather than simply mock Microsoft C.E.O. Bill Gates and comedian Jerry Seinfeld in this fish-out-of-water storyline, Microsoft makes fun of the regular people, too. It's more The Simple Life than It's a Wonderful Life.

This installment was released Thursday, just one week after the campaign's mysterious Shoe-Circus premier. It consists of a two 90-second commercials and one extended version, above, that lasts a whopping 4 minutes and 30 seconds.

The company's goal is to reconnect with consumers and to present itself with humanity and humor. While this new ad will succeed in attracting headlines and spurring cocktail-party chatter, it may hit a big glitch. The ad doesn't make Microsoft seem friendly and likeable, an important characteristic for a company that wants to reconnect with consumers.

The basic gist of the ad goes like this: Gates and Seinfeld are sitting around a dinner table eating scalloped potatoes for the second night in a row with a family consisting of three kids, two parents and a grandmother. The pair is living with this family to "connect with real people."

Seinfeld explains to Gates in the adolescent girl's pink bedroom: "You and I are a little out of it. You're living in some kind of moon house hovering over Seattle like the mother ship. I got so many cars I get stuck in my own traffic. We need to connect with real people."

Then the grandmother walks by and hollers, "Who took my teeth out of the freezer?"

The commercial continues with scenes of Gates and Seinfeld playing ping-pong, filling an aboveground swimming pool with a hose, being framed for stealing the family's leather giraffe by the tween daughter mad at Seinfeld for cutting his toenails in her bed. When Gates confronts her he says, "You're not so real."

The installment eventually ends with Gates and Seinfeld walking out of the house, down the neighborhood street with their suitcases looking for the next family to crash.

Seinfield then mentions that Gates has connected over a billion people. As Seinfeld asks Gates for another clue at what's to come for Microsoft, Gates gives Seinfeld another sign. He drops his luggage and does the robot.

"I think what people get surprised by is how funny and wry that Bill is and how willing he is to kind of poke fun at himself and his company and the world around him," Microsoft spokesman Eric Hollreiser said last week.

The commercial drives home the message that Seinfeld and Gates are unique and privileged while still human and friendly. But it's Microsoft's image of the "real people" that's a bit disconcerting. It's obvious the family was meant to be a bit weird. Microsoft even refers to the "real people" in quotation marks.

But the family's quirkiness is lathered on so thickly, they seem like they could be Napoleon Dynamite's next-door neighbors. The grandmother keeps her teeth in the freezer and fixes the car; the dad says the pool never gets warm; the family's home is styled circa The Brady Bunch; and some of the kids' hairstyles are more strange than trendy.

The family is so unusual, it seems like Microsoft is making fun of real people--just the people Microsoft wants to bond with.

by Willow Duttge

See what the tech blogosphere had to say about the ad.

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