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The ad about nothing: Seinfeld and Gates go shoe shopping

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Editor’s note: Writing today’s Skinny and filling in for LTW Editor Rick Smith this week is Noah Garrett. You can reach Noah directly at noah@thinkngc.com.

As reported two weeks ago on LTW, Microsoft Corporation has signed comedian Jerry Seinfeld as the company’s new pitchman. The first commercial debuted last night during the first NFL game of the season.

As a marketing, PR dude, my initial thoughts of the ad: cute, but ineffective. And, I’m not the only one thinking that way.

Several bloggers and reporters are taking some serious shots at the commercial today. Perhaps, Microsoft’s overall marketing strategy is that any press is good press considering Microsoft's Internet Explorer lost nearly a full percentage point in market share during August, the browser's biggest drop in three months, and we won’t even go into all the negativity surrounding the Vista OS.

The commercial features Seinfeld and recently retired Microsoft founder Bill Gates shoe shopping in a mall. The 90-second clip employs quick-cut editing and the kind of "humor from nothing" approach that defined Seinfeld's TV series. It tells the story of the odd couple's day at discount emporium Shoe Circus in the mall, where Gates buys a snappy leather number called "The Conquistador."

As they exit, Seinfeld asks if Microsoft is working on something to make computers "moist and chewy like cakes, so we can eat them while we're working." Seinfeld tells Gates to adjust his underwear if the answer is yes, and the software mogul does so, much to the comic's delight.

The commercial closes with the words "The future. Delicious." There's no overt sales pitch for specific Microsoft products, though the company's logo does appear briefly.

But this ad has a strange, overall tone to it. More than likely, we are going to be seeing a lot more of these Jerry and Bill spots in the near future, so let’s hope their chemistry improves on screen.

At one point during the awkwardly long ad (typically spots are 30 or 60 seconds, but this one appeared to be about 90 seconds) Seinfeld says, “Guess what Bill, you’re a 10.” Indeed, an interesting play on words, but that saying is a bit old school.

Didn’t the writers and directors watch the Olympics? A 10 doesn’t even exist anymore in gymnastics, well technically it does, but now that would be a really bad score. I think I know what they were going for, but whoever decided to use that line needs to be reminded that this is 2008.

MG Siegler at VentureBeat pointed out that using Bill Gates’ mugshot from an arrest for a traffic violation in 1977 on his Clown Club card is kind of funny. Good job, picking up on that, my friend.

Adweek's well-respected ad critic Barbara Lippert, a week before the commercial aired, was none too enamored of Microsoft employing Seinfeld as a pitchman: "The pick is so preposterously unhip it's as if the company had unconsciously internalized all of Apple's knocks against the poor, frustrated PC guy."

Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft is expected to spend an estimated $300 million on the overall campaign.

I tell you what, if I was a gymnastics judge in the Olympics and was force to rate this commercial, I might give this a 10, which, if you remember, isn’t too good these days.

What do you think?

In case you missed it, click the link in the On The Web section and watch for yourself.

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