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Rupal Parekh at Ad Age reports that Microsoft has quietly brought in Crispin Porter + Bogusky to handle Zune advertising:
Microsoft has quietly handed creative duties for its Zune digital music player to Crispin Porter & Bogusky, expanding the ad agency’s work for the software giant, people familiar with the matter said.
MDC Partners’ Crispin is the shop Microsoft called in earlier this year in the hopes of injecting some cool into the brand. That chunk of business is worth some $300 million in billings. The result has been the somewhat erratic "I’m a PC" campaign, Microsoft’s response to rival Apple’s long-running and successful comparative ad onslaught.
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Microsoft put $41 million in domestic measured media behind Zune last year, and $18 million for the first half of 2008, according to TNS Media Intelligence.
It occurs to me that after the Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates comedy duo fiasco, I have never weighed in on the successor "I’m a PC" campaign. Quite frankly, it struck me as the kissing cousin of the “public service” style advertising that big companies like IBM used to prefer - not overtly bad, but rather bland and hardly what one would expect from the bad boys at CP+B. Perhaps Zune will give them more scope for their famous wackiness. Of course, the real question is whether it will do anything for the Zune.
