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Bill Gates is an Idiot (at Marketing)

Posted by Mike Volpe on Wed, Sep 10, 2008
 

If I were a Microsoft stockholder, I would be so pissed that the company is spending millions of dollars running ads trying to "change its image".

The ad is stupid.  There is nothing to back up the assertion that they are cool.  In fact, Bill Gates buying discount shoes at a mall and eating a churro is anything but cool.

Anyone with half a brain sees right through the ads and then says... how about you take a few of those millions and build an operating system that is actually an upgrade from XP (unlike the downgrade that Vista currently is). 

Unless... maybe the whole point of the ads is for us to all start talking about how much the ads suck, rather than how much Vista sucks?  Perhaps Bill Gates is still a genius afterall.

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COMMENTS

and they still think it's all about the advertising...

posted @ Thursday, September 11, 2008 12:50 AM by Erin

Hey Mike, 
 
Agreed. When Bogusky grabbed this account and built a state of the art Ad Agency in Colorado, I was jazzed: could Microsoft actually do something cool with advertising? Please? 
 
With that kinda' green, those guys ought to be able to do some amazing, mind-bending tricks. 
 
Nope. Mind-numbing is more like it. 
 
I'm thinking Alex Bogusky is shilling for Apple (which we're actually OK with). 
 
Right-on, Mike. 
best, 
Mark Alan Effinger 
www.RichContent.com

posted @ Thursday, September 11, 2008 1:54 AM by Mark Alan Effinger

Right on Mike! No one thinks Bill Gates is some kind of genius. And yet Jerry Seinfeld is treating the guy like Gandhi.

posted @ Thursday, September 11, 2008 5:04 AM by Michael Wentworth

I believe that Seinfeld is and has always been a Mac guy - funny how $10mil will change your mind. The amount that MSFT is spending on this Vista campaign is about as much as Apple will spend on all advertising. MSFT spends 4x as much as Apple for 2x the revenue and is losing marketshare bit by bit - that's a losing equation.

posted @ Thursday, September 11, 2008 8:30 AM by Tom Lewis

I wonder if MS is running this in conjunction with the "Mojave Experiment" ads (http://tinyurl.com/3fu3c2). "hey we've changed our image with cool celebrities. Oh, and look, we fixed that joke of an OS we just came out with, you should love us". And it almost seems like they are leaning toward a Mac-like campaign with ads like the ad Mike featured. This is interesting because MS still has dominant market share, but for how long?

posted @ Thursday, September 11, 2008 4:44 PM by Adam Fullerton

I definitely agree that this ad campaign is horrible. The viewer has no clue really what is going on and it's confusing. I recall hearing at IMS that Microsoft has spent around $500m on this campaign...that's ludicrous!

posted @ Saturday, September 13, 2008 10:58 PM by Justin Levy

its brilliant!!!!!! :O 
and gates is a sexy sexy man<3

posted @ Sunday, October 12, 2008 1:47 PM by Rebecca

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