If you were watching football last night, as I was, you were undoubtedly riveted by the sight of Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Gates, a couple of churros, and some shoes. It was 90 seconds of the most outlandish advertising I’ve ever seen in my life, and like it or not, it has a lot of people talking.

The ad is taking a lot of heat amongst bloggers, which is sort of understandable. The ad is about nothing. Nobody seems to get it. The point is impossible to find. It ends with Gates moving his ass in response to an inquiry by Seinfeld about computers made of cake.

In other words, it is completely random, it features one of the richest men in the world playing along in a  completely bizarre situation, and nobody seems to know what the hell is going on. As Kenny Bania from Seinfeld would say, “That’s gold Jerry. Gold!”

The point of this ad is not to demonstrate Vista’s features or make Microsoft’s products look good. It is to reintroduce a company that has fallen on dubious times, and get people talking. Microsoft is hated by a lot of people. They are pretty much holding a monopoly in the OS, business software, and web browser spheres (for now), they’ve engaged in questionable business practices, and a lot of people don’t even think their products are very good. With a host of alternatives to Microsoft emerging, not the least of which are Apple and Google, it’s time for an image upgrade.

While I agree that Microsoft’s software isn’t where it should be, Apple fans are learning with the iPhone 3G that success brings stress. When you dominate a market as thoroughly as Microsoft does, people are going to hate you. Microsoft is viewed as old and past its prime. Sort of like Jerry Seinfeld.

That was the brilliance of the ad: Microsoft wasn’t trying to claim some kind of youthful, hip persona that no one would buy into. They didn’t bring in Seinfeld to shill for Vista. It was a couple of older guys chilling out and being random. And bringing back Bill Gates reintroduced the world to what Microsoft used to be: the reason the computer became a staple in households across the world. We could argue about whether or not the ideas were original, but Bill Gates played a big part in completely changing the way we live our lives.

But that is the past. The slogan featured at the end of the ad is telling: “The Future. Delicious.” Microsoft desperately needs to find a long-term niche that will help it maintain its position. Google’s release of Chrome sheds light into a possible future: scaled-down software that acts as a portal to the cloud. Will large operating systems cease to be necessary? Will proprietary software be important for the everyday PC user? Will Microsoft be left to operate only in the business sphere?

I think Microsoft does have an IBM-esqe future with business, at the very least, because they will pay very smart people lots of money to keep their systems secure, and businesses will need that. But can they remain in every home, on every PC, the way they are now, all over the world?

My guess is if they can crack the virtual cake riddle, the answer will be yes.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 11:42 amand is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.