We’ve all about how impressive Microsoft’s new $300 million advertising campaign was going to be and we’ve all seen the two ads featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. Now we’ve read that they’re dropping Jerry Seinfeld and we’ve read the spin that this was the plan all along.
As usual, John Gruber has insightful analysis of the situation. Writing at his Daring Fireball blog, There’s Nothing There:
Microsoft’s panicked reaction to these Seinfeld ads, yanking them from the air and severing ties with Seinfeld, isn’t because the ads were poorly received. And dropping these ads is a panicked reaction. Let’s not pretend it makes any sense that the Seinfeld spots were planned as a two-episode teaser all along. No one signs Jerry Seinfeld for $10 million in a much-heralded deal to make just two spots that only run for a grand total of two weeks. The most telling fact is that the firm that reached out to the media yesterday to explain that this sudden shift was supposedly the plan all along was not Crispin Porter, the advertising agency producing the campaign, but Waggener Edstrom, Microsoft’s PR firm. Advertising campaigns which are going according to plan do not need PR firms to assert such.
