Hit and Miss Microsoft

Today on Adage.com there was a good article showing the new advertising Microsoft is coming out with for Internet Explorer 8. I have to admit the advertising for bing.com kind of drove me nuts. You know, the ones where people are talking and then all of a sudden fall into a weird narcoleptic daze where instead of falling asleep they start spouting out nonsense blaming it on search overload. Exactly what is search overload by the way, and does it really need to be cured? Isn't that what the advanced feature is on search engines if for anyway?

Well Microsoft has now come out with these gems, which is funny because how they have them listed in the article is what I believe to be how they go in quality. They go from good, to ok, to "my gosh nobody ever needs to see that".

S.H.Y.N.E.S.S. - Internet Explorer 8

I have to admit I like Dean Cain simply because he is half Japanese like me, but still I liked this commercial. The mockery of a lawyer commercial, as made famous by Bob Loblaw on Arrested Development, is a good touch and how can anyone hate funny pictures of cats? Also it shows an actual useful feature of being able to send stuff to friends quickly. Nicely done.


G.R.I.P.E.S. - Internet Explorer 8

Ok, we get it, old people are grumpy and have slow internet speeds on their computers. They really don't know how to use them and constantly tap on the keyboard. A well known stereotype, but having Dean Cain live in the chair of your unaware Grandfather? Ok, whatever, at least it doesn't drive me crazy.


O.M.G.I.G.P. - Internet Explorer 8

Whoever saw this and green lighted it needs to be beaten by an oar. Who in the world ever thought people would enjoy seeing this? My goodness, I can only imagine what was going through the minds of these people:

"You know what people love? Seeing someone puke! Genius! But you know what would make it even better, to have someone slip on said puke and then get puked on not once, but twice! This is advertising gold!"

Oh, but it gets better. What made this person puke was some horrific website left over in the history tab that starts with hairy and is followed by a series of beeps to leave it up to our imagination just how sickly this site was. So pretty much the feature that Microsoft is showing here is the ability to instantly hide any wacky website you might be visiting. This of course makes sense, because I am sure everyone is wondering "how can we capture the ignorant and forgetful pervert market? That is where the money it at!".

This is all too bad because I really liked the first commercial, and then saw this campaign slowly descend to puke jokes and marketing to forgetful perverts. I guess like GoDaddy says, any attention is good attention.