Mac vs. PC and missing the point entirely

AppleInsider posts about the relatively poor performance of Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” ads when measured in online views - some 2 million so far compared to 6 million for the earlier Seinfeld spots.

Which sort of misses the point. Nothing about the latest spots indicates that viral passalong is a metric worth looking at here. These are good but basically conventional commercials.

But AI’s specialty is rumors, not communications analysis. The story originated from Visible Measures, an Internet video measurement company - I’m not sure what their excuse is. Audience measurement is their business, but - well it might be a case of a man with a hammer.

Grant McCracken (a smart guy with an inordinate love of Wordle) had a great writeup last week on what’s going on with the Microsoft campaign from a cultural perspective and why it works. I think he’s exactly right though he makes no reference to the Seinfeld stuff.

My take is that Seinfeld was a deliberate head fake. Microsoft (or CP+B) said “heylookitthis” and used a couple of very unusual spots to dislodge in our collective heads some very entrenched notions of the Microsoft brand. Just loosened things up a bit. And without that initial effort I’d guess that the subsequent spots would come across quite differently.