I’m not a PC

Ok, depending on who you believe, Microsoft has abruptly ended its Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld advertisements due to criticism, or it was a planned introduction for its second wave of advertising in response to those funny, entertaining Apple ads with the PC guy and the Mac guy.

This time it’s a montage of people — everyone’s represented from shark divers to a ‘human being’ — saying they’re a PC. Bill’s there..so is a guy with beard and even some ‘celebrities’ including a Desperate Housewife and her real-life basketball star husband.

As dumb as the Jerry-Bill ads were they were pretty funny in a way and nowhere as dumb as this “I’m a PC” campaign.

The thing I don’t get it is if the goal here is to put Microsoft back in the minds of the user base why go with something so dull and bland and boring. PCs are about innovation. Apple is about innovation.

Microsoft, even critics have to admit, is about innovation. You just don’t get that message with these ads. Maybe the problem isn’t Microsoft but its ad agencies and marketing gurus. Maybe it’s with Microsoft’s self-identity. But just consider what is and has been done with a PC in the past decade or so, what Windows has brought into the world, and there has to be a better message to share than people identifying themselves as PCs.

The only thing these ads got me thinking about was why a few people in the montage — Bill, of course, and a guy named Sean and another guy obviously named Jeff — have email addresses on the screen when they appear.

That got my curiosity going.. so I sent a few emails off just to see what kind of response I might get.