Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Microsoft made this video lame on purpose.
What’s the point? To generate buzz? Mission accomplished I suppose, but it’s not the type of buzz a company should be promoting. Microsoft has turned the comment feature off on the YouTube channel it sits on so if they are trying to generate buzz, they don’t want it recorded. So far the comments on various blogs break down roughly between the following:
1. This video being six minutes of your life that you will never get back (I only lost two of those minutes)
2. Criticism of the acting, the film work and just about anything else imaginable about the video
3. Microsoft providing another reason for people to switch to Apple.
I can’t see much value in that buzz. You could start hurling farm animals from the roof of your corporate headquarters and that would generate a buzz as well. It probably wouldn’t move much product however.
Microsoft lost their way with the Seinfeld/Gates ads, which tried to be funny but were not. They then adopted ‘lame’ as the new corporate video standard in their Songsmith music – thing. Now they have circled the wagons around ‘just plain bad’. Maybe bad is the new good but I can’t imagine how this will help the brand.
Of course the other possibility is that Microsoft actually thought this was a good promotion. That would be really bad.
Wow, I’m speechless. All that’s missing is Fred Willard manning the Foreman grill.
MS Video viewers, (and wayward producers),
Bad is not good. Bad will never be good. When we say “bad” in a bad way, we are not insinuating “good.” Bad has to be “bad” to be “bad.” Simple as that.
MS is trying too hard with this video. Even if they served this clip with a fine California Cabernet and triple deep chocolate, one would be hard pressed to watch it through completion. Personally, as I suffered through this “episode,” I began asking myself repeatedly, “Don’t you have something you could do?” almost as if I was searching desperately for an excuse to permanently pause this dud.
If MS was my client, I would tell them that the only successful launches are the ones that defy gravity. Then I’d go about creating a video that does just that: defies the very gravity that holds back most product launches: apathy.
Carl Rachel
crachel@co.hunterdon.nj.us
This video is bad. Yikes – but also hilarious.