Microsoft ads round-up: Staff used Macs, Ballmer crazy, spoofs lame
It’s emerged that Microsoft staff used Macs to create several of the images distributed to the media for its new campaign. Meanwhile Microsoft’s quest to reclaim “I’m a PC” has prompted some truly atrocious spoofs – and worse, a Steve Ballmer take.
As part of the campaign, Microsoft has put up four still shots from the TV ads in the media section of its site. The idea is to give journalists, both on websites and print publications, a good-quality shot to illustrate stories about the campaign. The shots featured Microsoft employee Sean Siler, author Deepak Chopra, adventurer Geoff Green and ‘Meaghan’ the shark diver.
Unfortunately one sharp-eyed writer noticed from the file properties that the images were created on the Mac edition of Adobe Photoshop. (It should be noted that the images currently either state they were created on the Windows edition or don’t carry such details. Assuming the original writer was correct, Microsoft may have replaced the images in the meantime.) It’s not exactly a major shock – few would deny Macs have a better reputation for graphic work – but certainly a tad embarrassing.
The same could be said of an edition of the “I’m a PC” series which, thankfully, looks to be an online exclusive. It features Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (pictured) saying “I’m a PC and I love this company”, which doesn’t sound too bad – until you see that he’s actually screaming it in the fashion of the type of intoxicated man who Jimmy Swaggart would tell to calm down.
Unfortunately the blogosphere doesn’t seem to be doing much better with the inevitable spoofs. There’s a man making a strange point about web traffic, the inevitable lolcats spinoff, and even a bizarre cross-over with the ‘Talk like a pirate’ meme. Perhaps the closest to at least gentle amusement is one which takes a Microsoft original and fills every monitor shot with a Blue Screen of Death.
If this is the stuff people are putting on-line, you can only dread to think how lame the clips they are actually sending to Microsoft in the hope of getting shown in Times Square.
Related Posts:
September 22nd, 2008
It IS also on TV. *shudders*
September 23rd, 2008
Deepak Chopra is a new age fruit loop, and as such has less than zero credibility (hint for Deepak: there are no operating systems of *any* type in the lake of fire).
Sean Siler is a PC that has been “stereotyped”, but is nonetheless happy to appear in a (stereotypical) cameo (humour is a very effective marketing tool, and no doubt the people at Apple are having a good laugh…).
I’ve never heard of Geoff Green before, but apparently he’s an Arctic explorer – so doubtless he’s also an authority on matters technical.
“Meaghan” the shark diver is coy about revealing their full name, which is hardly a ringing endorsement of any product they are pushing.
And Steve Ballmer, with his self-appellation of “Monkey Boy”, which is so very apt: a CEO who is an evolutionary throwback at the helm of a company which hasn’t evolved. If he were someone with technical skills he would be kept locked in an office far away from the public, and, should his antics become known, a red-faced and apologetic Microsoft would beg that he be excused as an idiosyncratic genius. Sadly for Microsoft, Mr Ballmer appears to have the eccentricity, but not the brains, and he is as manifestly ill-suited to advertising as he is to public speaking.
September 23rd, 2008
Hugh: you must be a Mac fanboy.
September 23rd, 2008
Hello Norm,
The last Apple computer I used was an Apple IIe (and that was a fair while ago). I use AIX, HP-UX, Linux (RHEL, CentOS, and Fedora), and XP (the last of these only when it is unavoidable). I used to work as an analyst/programmer, and I still do a bit of software development in shell script and Perl. I have also done a lot of work as a DBA (mostly Pick and UniVerse, but also a bit of Oracle). I hope this clarifies things vis-a-vis my bias.
Just out of interest, do you think that any of the five people I referred to in my first post are going to help the image of either Microsoft or its products?
Regards,
Hugh