Hit tip to Little-Storping-On-The-Swuff for bringing to my attention that these much-anticipated Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates Commercials had begun to appear.
Unfortunately, I haven’t see it on the air yet, but that’s probably because I’m not in the target demographic and don’t watch the Home Shopping Network, anyway.
Some people, apparently, think these are quite funny. On the other hand, some people collect string. Still others kept the Jerry Seinfeld’s eponymous show on the air for 10 flippin’ years!
Perhaps these ads will tie into the zeitgeist (of which I’m apparently not a part of) and be immensely popular. This one reminds nothing more than a retread of the Seinfeld/Superman American Express commercials. I suppose those ads were successful, as I do at least remember that they were for American Express, although I don’t remember much about them except that Superman was a neurotic git.
If this commercial is trying to substitute Gates for Superman and therefore, by association, elevate Gates to Superman status – they’ve failed horribly.
If they’re trying to tell us that Microsoft is in the far-flung distant future going to come out with a working computer all they really did was point out that they haven’t got one now. Not how I’d want to be “on message.” (Or, perhaps, considering how that “secret” is revealed, it may be telling us that Gates is rubbing his ass in our faces?)
The commercial is tediously long, over 90 seconds, during most of it I was so reminded of the Seinfeld American Express commercials, I thought Gates was plugging Amex, not Microsoft. If I hadn’t hadn’t known, in advance, that Seinfeld was doing Microsoft commercials, I would never have guessed it was for Microsoft. In the end, I was expecting Gates to whip out his Amex and pay for the shoes, which was the denouement of the Amex spots (if I recall correctly.)
If indeed they had followed the pattern, the Shoe Circus employee would use a Microsoft POS sales to ring-up Gates’ purchase. That however, would have suspended disbelief too much for most viewers. I think we’re all familiar with how crap cash registers that run Window’s are. I think the $0.99 Store is the only place left that uses them, and they can get away with it because everything is $0.99 and they don’t have to scan accurately.
No bashing of Microsoft and/or Bill Gates will be complete; however, without this caveat: The charitable work being done by the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation is, in my opinion, one of the greatest acts of humanism in the history of mankind. That Gates has seen fit to utilize his obscene wealth in this way, for whatever his reason, earns the man a big chunk of respect in my book. It would have been better for these commercials been used to try to promote that work rather than Microsoft.
I mentioned that I got my new Mac Mini to replace my antique G4, but what I failed to mention was that I still had an older Cinema Display that’s still gorgeous (if not wide screen aspect) but it uses the older, proprietary ADC connection – which not only supplied power to the monitor, but also USB and allowed the monitor to act as the on/off switch for the computer.
