Microsoft News Tracker

Crispin Porter + Bogusky missed the rumored July start date of their $300 million "Microsoft is cool" advertising campaign, but Suzanne Vranica and Robert A. Guth at the WSJ have hints as to what to expect when it finally arrives on September 4th:

Microsoft Corp., weary of being cast as a stodgy oldster by Apple Inc.’s advertising, is turning for help to Jerry Seinfeld.

The software giant’s new $300 million advertising campaign, devised by a newly hired ad agency, has been closely guarded. But Mr. Seinfeld will be one of the key celebrity pitchmen, say people close to the situation. He will appear with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates in ads and receive about $10 million for the work, they say.

It’s always possible that this may be a stroke of genius, but somehow it doesn’t seem promising. Reinforcing that impression is the further rumor that the theme of the campaign is supposedly "Windows, Not Walls" and will stress "connecting people and ideas." I just hope they didn’t talk Mr. Gates into another goofy future digital lifestyle demo like he used to give at CES (cf. 2006 and 2007- they were hyping connected experiences then too), although that might work if they played it for laughs.

I would also observe that the original buzz was that the focus of the campaign was to be all of Microsoft’s consumer products, but this seems to be a Vista exclusive.

Last week Ina Fried broke a story at CNET about a Microsoft effort to buff up Windows Vista’s image by filming Windows XP users with a bad opinion of Vista raving about a new version of Windows called "Mojave" after they were shown a demo.  The trick was that Mojave was actually Vista and the test subjects were suitably gobsmacked when they found out. Microsoft apparently liked the reactions so much that they are now on the Web at http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/.

While the idea is modestly entertaining, I’m puzzled about the utility of it beyond demonstrating that the average consumer is easily deceived by both the "madness of crowds" and a slick demo that I’m sure lacked Vista’s more tedious annoyances. More to the point, consumers don’t really have any choice but Vista and it hasn’t seemed to slow Windows PC buying except for a relative few who have newly given Apple a try.

Where Windows Vista has a real acceptance problem is with enterprises who for the most part do have a choice to stay with Windows XP and many are doing so based on their technical and financial evaluations. Mojave would hardly fare so well in a similar demonstration with enterprise CIOs and their technical staffs.

Ed Bott has spotted a teaser on the Microsoft home page that looks like the start of the much anticipated $300 million ad campaign defending Vista and generally enhancing Microsoft’s cool credentials. Maybe, but if a picture of a sailing ship

that leads to some dry facts about Vista is really part of it, then Crispin Porter + Bogusky (the "bad boy" ad agency with the contract) have slowed down quite a bit since the days of Fantasy Ranch:

Update: The original Fantasy Ranch video posted above is now "no longer available", so I have replaced it with another one. That may disappear too in the fullness of time, but you can read more about its genesis and CP+B at Fast Company among other places.

Update 7/23/2008: Microsoft says the "get the facts" effort has actually been running for six months (who knew?) and isn’t the CP+B cool campaign.

Yesterday, the head lawyers for the protagonists in the Yahoo acquisition soap opera headed off to Washington for testimony before both House and Senate committees, but it turned out to be one of the least exciting episodes so far. Brad Smith (Microsoft’s General Counsel), David Drummond (Google’s Chief Legal Officer), and Michael Callahan (Yahoo’s General Counsel) all delivered predictable prepared testimony as to whether Yahoo’s search advertising deal with Google indicated creeping monopoly or was just an ordinary business transaction that would provide better advertising for both consumers and advertisers.

The biggest excitement was provided by Brad Smith quoting Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang:

Yang "looked us in the eye," Smith said, and told Microsoft executives, "The search market today is basically a bipolar market. On one pole there’s Google, and on the other pole there are Yahoo and Microsoft both competing with Google. If we do this deal with Google, Yahoo will become part of Google’s pole, and Microsoft would not be strong enough in this market to remain a pole of its own."
…
Senators quickly bored in on Smith and Callahan, saying that Yang’s "bipolar" comments, if substantiated, were startling.

"This is pretty explosive stuff," said Sen. Herbert Kohl, D-Wis., chairman of the antitrust subcommittee, who reminded the witnesses they were under oath.

Smith said he repeated "exactly what Mr. Yang said." After the June meeting, Smith recalled, Microsoft chief executive, Steve Ballmer, told him "He (Yang) said there’s only going to be one pole in the market. I guess that would be a monopole, wouldn’t it?"

Callahan was pressed to respond by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., a former prosecutor. At first Callahan said "it would not be appropriate to comment on Mr. Smith’s accuracy." Then he said he could not recall Yang’s comment.

Good punning on Mr. Ballmer’s part, I’d say, but none of the solons called for storming the gates at the Department of Justice on behalf of either Microsoft or Yahoo-Google so this was merely all for PR value.

The 2008 E3 gaming conference is being held next week and as usual it’s a war of the flacks from the game publishers and game console vendors including Microsoft. One item increasing the Microsoft buzz is an all but certain price cut on the Xbox 360 Pro version:

Just in case all of those retailer circulars from Best Buy, KMart, et al, wasn’t enough proof of an Xbox 360 price drop coming on Sunday, here’s one more tidbit of proof.

A GameStop employee has sent us cell pics of the internal announcement for the coming Xbox 360 Pro price drop announcement. They also included pics of the shelf art all of which will go on display on July 13, the day before E3 kicks off with Microsoft’s press conference.

Of course theories abound as to what it all means including possible new Xbox versions, but I am sure Microsoft’s cooling Xbox sales had more than a little to do with it.