Redmond (WA) - If we didn’t know that Bill Gates will dedicate much of his future time to his charity, we would say that he could be enjoying his retirement from Microsoft as a part time actor, showcasing the talent he acted in commercials with Steve Ballmer and John Heder (at least he may have more talent than most IT executives). And even if that may not become reality, Gates will make his TV debut in September alongside Jerry Seinfeld, spearheading a gigantic anti-Apple campaign.     

Microsoft will begin firing its marketing artillery against Apple starting September 4 in an effort to derail Apple’s campaign to create of Mac computers as being cool and Vista PCs being failures. The ads will feature a "Windows, Not Walls" tagline and are expected to highlight Vista's openness and criticize Apple's integrated business model approach that leaves very little room for user requests. Jerry Seinfeld will add a touch of Hollywood, for which Microsoft reportedly paid $10 million.

The new ads are part of Microsoft's $300 million advertising campaign created to repair a damaged public image of the Windows Vista operating system. It is considered to be one of the largest marketing campaigns in Microsoft's history, which is believed to have been brought up by CEO Steve Ballmer. In a leaked memo, Ballmer informed his troops that the release of Vista SP1 enabled Microsoft to launch a new campaign. "Now it's time to tell our story," he wrote to Microsoft employees. "In the weeks ahead, we'll launch a campaign to address any lingering doubts our customers may have about Windows Vista."

According to the Wall Street Journal, the campaign will stress "breaking down barriers that prevent people and ideas from connecting." It is also expected to address the Zune music player and the perception that it is a failure. Apparently, Microsoft was considering many celebrity comedians, among them Chris Rock and Will Ferrell, but choose Jerry Seinfeld who is best-known for his sitcom.

We can’t wait see what a $10 million pay and many more millions in marketing funds can deliver and hope that we don’t see simply payback in the fashion of Apple’s Mac vs. PC commercials (a compilation can be found here) that, admittedly, can be considered to be insulting. We still remember the fantastic Windows 95 commercial and while we believe that Microsoft taking aim at Apple will not hurt, it surely would be nice to see Microsoft choosing that path again as well.

$300 million

Aug 21, 2008 17:12     

Imagine if they spent $300 million on improving Vista! :x
nke report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +5

Win95 ad

Aug 21, 2008 22:16     

[OT] Win95 ad: Hey, there were Eee-sized laptops back then. [/OT]
Meeeee report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Appealing to young people

Aug 21, 2008 22:17     

isn't done with two guys who are over 50.
Sceptrix report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +4

I can see it now: "What's the deal with the Apple M...

Aug 21, 2008 23:58     

I can see it now: "What's the deal with the Apple Macintosh? It isn't an apple OR a macintosh! I mean, come on!"
x report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +4

ms marketing is the probem..

Aug 22, 2008 02:43     

not vista.. vista is a good os. ive been using it since beta 1 and its vastly supperior to xp.. ón decent hardware its faster[than xp on the same hardware] its far more secure, looks better and has a better ui alot of people refer to 'many' problems with vista but very few can name any such problems.. thats not to say there arent problems with vista but they are cerinly not 'many' and most are pretty tame.. ms has done a poor job of marketing vista and apple has done a good job of slamming it.. and the press is fooled by apples commercials [or just tries to cater to a succepteble audience]

aL report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +5

simple, about time

Aug 22, 2008 05:24     

While I absolutely can't stand the Apple commercials (I have little problems with Apple, no more than any other PC vendor), I think this was well over due for MS. They have been getting beat on by lame Apple commercials for too long with no real response. It think they should start with something along the lines of "whats this? An Apple running Windows, with a utility provided by Apple? hmmm....????", Oh wait and it has the same specs as this Dell/Hp/Acer for over double the price, would you look at that! If it wasn't "illegal" I would prefer they show a commercial of a $400 Acer with OSX86 on it that has the specs of one of their $1000 Imac/Mac Mini products. But hey, why should Apple allow their OS on anything else, I mean common it's not like they use other peoples products 0.o

crawgsx report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -2

re: ms marketing is the problem

Aug 22, 2008 07:16     

please no one to respond to this guy. I am not saying that i agree or disagree, but lets not turn this into a mac v pc thread again.
mtotho report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -3

Seinfeld's Mac

Aug 22, 2008 07:29     

In Jerry's apartment on the Seinfeld set, he always had a Mac in the corner. Funny.
C-Drive report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +3

Marketing and Legal fees...

Aug 22, 2008 07:45     

...that's where the money's is unfortunately going. I wonder what the impact would be on Windows 7 if Microsoft used most of that money instead at bolstering up the development team for the next major OS release. Cheers
Anthony Tower report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +4

PR scheme will fall short.

Aug 22, 2008 07:48     

MS isn't good at PR. Vista is a great OS but will continue to get bashed by the people that are to cheap to upgrade or don't have the intellect to appreciate Vista. People will line up to say that the business world won't adopt Vista, but that is misleading. Businesses will upgrade to Vista when their current investment in computers that have XP need to be replaced. A friend of mine is a principal in the city where I live. Every computer in every classroom is running Vista except the Special Ed class which is using XP (for obvious reasons).

Dr Stew Pidd PhD report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -3

Vista: Software Compatibility Problems

Aug 22, 2008 08:01     

Vista has software compatibility problems. It doesn't work with many business apps and other programs. Having the richest man in the world and some 54 year old IMO washed up comedian has-been trying to hawk Vista won't make any difference. B^D I doubt this $300 Million ad campaign will change the minds of those fully 35% Windows XP Pro users who "downgraded" from Vista (more like an upgrade if you ask me). I agree, they should've used that money to improve Vista instead of wasting it on slick advertising.

Cypherdude report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

Interesting

Aug 22, 2008 08:08     

Jerry Seinfeld had a Macintosh in his apartment on his show.
Ryan report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

re: $300 million

Aug 22, 2008 08:56     

I see the apple ads worked on you then. Using Vista x64 on my desktop and Vista 32 on my laptop. Extremely stable and a pleasure to use.
Ace Young report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -2

Jerry on Vista...

Aug 22, 2008 09:06     

"Whaaaaaat, is so bad about Vista? And whhhhhyyyyyy are people not getting it? I mean look at it, it's a Vista."
fanboy report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -3

@ PR scheme will fall short.

Aug 22, 2008 09:14     

So i don't have intelligence as you say because I don't upgrade to vista. or i'm too 'cheap'? sorry i don't want to throw down 150 bucks when i've got something that works perfectly fine, thanks. hey at my school they run a linux VM on windows xp. sorry to disappoint that they're not "intellectual" running windows vista for everyone to use and appreciate. guess they're just crazy and want function over form, or to save money. or maybe they're super crazy and dont want compatibility issues or be forced to upgrade entire systems when they're already working. or maybe they just bought new computers and actually had windows xp put on them instead! condescending cracker.

Kyle report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +4

Comical

Aug 22, 2008 09:32     

I find it comical that gigantic Microsoft feels that it needs a huge ad campaign to respond to Apple. Apparently owning over 90% of the market isn't good enough for Gates. His charity obviously doesn't extend to the competition. I see this in the same way as the Intel-AMD rivalry. I've never used an Apple computer and don't plan to, but we all need for Microsoft to have some competition. What if we had no choice but to accept whatever Microsoft chose to give us? We'd never get anything better than Windows 2000.

Old Crank report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +6

@mtotho

Aug 22, 2008 09:44     

In case you didn't notice, this whole article is mac vs pc.
09 F9 report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

re: Mac vs. PC

Aug 22, 2008 10:41     

"please no one to respond to this guy. I am not saying that i agree or disagree, but lets not turn this into a mac v pc thread again." That's a funny statement. You'd think any thread that trails an article with a title that cites "Bill Gates" and "anti-Apple" is in fact a Mac vs. PC thread. If it isn't then the posters would be off-topic. The bottom line is that Vista is a much better OS than it's made out to be. Sure there were some initial kinks and the hardware requirements are a bit higher, but that is to be expected. History is definitely repeating itself, yet many people don't see it. The masses almost always view change with hesitance. Hopefully this ad campaign will do much to dispel the prevailing misconceptions. I'm not sure what the campaign can accomplish in the business sector however, and that is the real challenge. Most companies simply have no justifiable incentive to make the switch from XP. Software incompatibility can be overcome only if a company is willing to direct sufficient effort and capital at the problem. No need to be concerned about Mac OS in this area though. If your XP apps don't work in Vista then (barring VMs) I'm sure a Mac is not the answer.

accrajoe report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

MS Marketing is not the problem

Aug 22, 2008 13:03     

In response: "not vista.. vista is a good os. ive been using it since beta 1 and its vastly supperior to xp.. ón decent hardware its faster[than xp on the same hardware] its far more secure, looks better and has a better ui" Not many people agree with you, on every point. It's a good OS but XP is better on every point. "alot of people refer to 'many' problems with vista but very few can name any such problems.. thats not to say there arent problems with vista but they are cerinly not 'many' and most are pretty tame.. " This is your opinion, it's not fact. It's also misinformed because, yes there are problems. "ms has done a poor job of marketing vista and apple has done a good job of slamming it.. and the press is fooled by apples commercials [or just tries to cater to a succepteble audience]" I don't agree with your opinion. Vista failed because it's a bloated, skinned, copy of XP with UAC tacked on. UAC can be added to XP, or something similar.

Hax Or report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

PC apple.

Aug 22, 2008 16:09     

Vista is bloated because like any new car model, people want new feature and makes the car get heavier each new model. How can you possible to achieve more feature with less code...you tell me....how are you going to write it? If you can tell me how to write a new o/s with thousands of new feature and more user-friendly and with less code.... then you are a genius. you can't compare to a skeleton code for running server because like linux server, good administrator install only those options that is needed. A regular user will have no such technical knowledge to find out what they needed...so they just install all....which even for Linux could get bloated. MS does do poor marketing. apple can overcharge 15-20% profit compare to 10% on DELL,HP for similairly equipted machines...but it does look or feel better..so that's the extra 10% price you pay for...it's a fair game. Apple ads are having lots of lies ...so microsoft should at least do something to counter the sterotyping from apple. I have used vista for a while on 4-5 machines....it's not noticabilly slower than XP... and plus some machine just comes with vista...so I don't really know how fast it could be on XP... I just do the normal stuff, music, TV, download , browsing.... not too advance stuff...so may be didn't hit the bugs...plus bugs depends on your hardware a lot of times, due to bad drivers... So they dug you have doesn't mean I have it too. yea..you see blogs with complains...but only those that complains do blogging...if it works fine...I won't go blog about it everywhere.

yo report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

Will MS's $300 Million Give Me...

Aug 22, 2008 16:48     

1) Less ridiculous pricing on a retail upgrade copy? 2) More compelling reasons to spend the $$$ to move from an OS that already does everything I need it to? 3) Less DRM? 4) A few extra bucks to spend on upgrades to make their beast of an OS run acceptably? Crawgsx, you're a moron. Show me a Dell system you put together on their site that is spec'd out to a base model on Apple's store that you can get at half the price. Maybe you'll luck out and find one of those $500 instant discounts on a system where Dell bent over and let a bunch of vendors shove a ton of crapware up its cornhole. How about that $400 Acer? Do you get a 20" LCD with that? Cuz you *do* with an iMac, you know. Does Acer even *have* a system with the same form factor as the Mac Mini? I'd ask you to think before you post, but that would probably mean you'd never have anything to blather about. Come to think of it, that'd be a really good thing.

Cromag report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +4

Jerry has a mac in his sitcom's apartment

Aug 23, 2008 07:34     

Am I the only one to remembrer that Seinfeld has a Mac SE and a Powerbook Duo in he corner of his apartment ?
ltb report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

There's an obvious person they should have used

Aug 23, 2008 17:49     

There's an obvious comedian Microsoft should have used ... http://notnews.today.com/2008/08/21/30/
David Gerard report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

Re: re: $300 million

Aug 25, 2008 10:46     

I loved the entertaining Mac ads, but I don't have a Mac nor do I expect to buy one soon. I hope you can judge an OS better than a comment on a marketing campaign budget. :)
nke report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0