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Why Seinfeld Is Perfectly Wrong For Microsoft

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by Jeff Bercovici
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Sep 15 2008 11:06am EDT

Why Seinfeld is Perfectly Wrong for Microsoft

The more I see of Microsoft's new ad campaign starring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates, the more I wonder: What were they thinking?

A lot of critics have noted that the ads fail to present any positive argument for Windows. But that's not my problem with them. Nor is it their lack of originality. (Watch this clip to see how much the spots, with their shambling mix of the mundane and the absurd, owe to Seinfeld's work for American Express.) Nor is it even that they're just not very funny.

No, what drops my jaw is that no one at Microsoft or its ad agency (Crispin Porter & Bogusky) considered the significance of Seinfeld-as-metaphor. A towering presence during the 1990s, increasingly irrelevant since then...remind you of any software giants you can think of?


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