Seinfeld ads get thumbs down
VOLISH ATTEMPTS to improve profile of Vista with a $300 million advertising campaign starring comedian Jerry Seinfeld are proving about as useful as a chocolate teapot.
Advertising reviewers have been looking at the first offering, which stars Software King of the World (retired) Sir William Gates III buying shoes.
While Vole said the first advert (which fails to even mention Windows) is just a teaser, it does look like $300 million would have been better spent giving away free copies of the broken OS.
What is perhaps more surprising is that the advertisement is not at all funny and is so embarrassing it is impossible to watch without your fillings dropping out. A moment where Bill wiggles his bottom has to be one of the most vile things seen on TV since Steve Ballmer tried to peddle early PCs.
The advert has been much mocked in the weekend blogs and advertising critics are wondering what it is that Microsoft is thinking of.
If you still want to see it after our warning, it is here. Or you can see one with an alternate (and much funnier) ending here. µ
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Interesting choice of photo on his Shoe Circus Platinum Card!
It is Bill's mugshot from when he was arrested in New Mexico in 1977. 

See here:
http://tinyurl.com/5twmbu

Except someone has Photoshopped out the info board strap around his neck.

I agree with the consensus - the ads are meaningless crap. 
If it is the start of a campaign, and the explanation of what is going on is in a later ad, then some coke snorting advertising executive has blown a crap-load of Microsoft cash because no one cares enough to follow whatever the narrative is.

Besides, I was lead to believe that television had severely diminished our attention spans, so who can keep track of long winded advertising campaigns?
as far as adverts go, I’m sorry but this one ain’t too bad and the fact is that most adverts are really, really, really sh**.

It's just that people hate Microsoft so passionately that they are almost too willing to verbally beat anything they produce to a pulp. Not that they don’t deserve it, they do – please MS listen to your customers and if not at least listen to your own employees!
They still have their backup ad-system of having people scour the net for mention of vista and then commenting that they love vista and it's flawless.
That campaign actually has some feeble minds convinced I think.
He is not "sir" Gates, since he does not have British citizenship.
I at least found them entertaining enough to watch them and not fast forward through them, but maybe that was because I work in IT and was curious about them.
Why don't you throw in a few links to the blogs that are apparently mocking the ad so much.

Maybe next you can make fun of his worldwide charity and the millions of lives he has saved through innoculations and treatment of diseases worldwide. That would be hillarious.
Bill looks like the young Austin Powers.
Another ad that doesn't mention the product it is trying to sell. These bother me.
At least with Bill Gates you can assume it is either some Microsoft product or some philanthropic endeavor.
They really shouldn't let Jerry ad-lib though. I don't want a moist and chewy computer myself. I'd have to buy a new one once a week.
So Bill is saving the world, huh? I would rather he had saved Windows. Now he can't any longer. He cannot even buy his own shoes. Poor Chap!

Now Bill - can we help you choose your new operating system? Take a guess: It's available in any size, it's inside the biggest servers, it's inside the Eee PC, it's inside the Kindle, it's inside your appliances - and soon it's inside your phone.

Maybe Tux will even take a shower with you...
People may not like it, but they keep watching like the trained masses they are.
I'll take a 30 second Mac commercial over that any day. At least they are mildly amusing.
Actually when a King or Queen bestows Knighthood on a person, if that said person is a foreigner, in theory he also becomes a citizen of the Realm.
So Bill Gates is a dual citizen.
The angle the inquirer always seems to spin on almost any issue is contempt...

it sells ...

if there is criticism to be had from a marketing stand point ... is that i think i need to buy those shoes.... rather than vista... had jerry used the metaphor that will the nest os help you jump further or walk faster .. it might be a stonrger tie in between the products ... strikingly familiar to the old show used in wag the dog...

i do use vista...more so to show im not some whiny IT pocker protector who is afraid of change...but i also use win2k 2k3 server win2k win 98 dos unix... whatever... i've even worked with mac os's... they are just tools... 

but i did like the ad....
I don't think I've seen a worse ad than this, Seinfeld is acting like the check is in the bank and Gates has an expression on his face along the lines of "That guy in marketing said this would work...."

An ad like this would have made sense back before Vista was released and it was just "Longhorn."

But now....wtf? Are we going to have several commercials in a stream building up to the mystery that is Vista? Will it be any better than Confident-Clear-Connected? 

And nice touch Bill, using the old mugshot on the picture ID, makes us think you're one of the crowd. really. 

And please, I really could have done without Bill G adjusting his shorts.....
I hate Jerry Seinfeld's humour... I can't understand the fact why americans like it when you got Fraiser. Hell, I bet it would be funny if it was Frasier.

The proper ending for that crapvert should have been Bill telling Jerry, "Ever been to my house?" "No, is it like Disney Land?" "Yes, but way cooler."
Not all Americans are Seinfeld fans. Some of us had rather watch dogs puke than hear a single word that cretin has to say.
Bill gates has cost the wold so much in terms of lost productivity, lost opportunity, failure of imagination, and wasted human potential that he could give away every cent he has and it wouldn't make up for what he has inflicted upon us all. Just add up every IT expenditure that could have been easily avoided and think about what might have been done with it.