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I know this probably hasn’t hit us back home here in Singapore yet, but, well, essentially, Microsoft had this $300,000,000 Ad Campaign rolling on TV screens and all in the US (and Canada, it would seem).

Edit: I missed out two zeros, it’s 300 millionn, not 3 million.

Okay, for those of you who didn’t hear about it at all, this clip inside features Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld (some angmoh comedian which apparently is famous in the US). So, it might be worth watching

Well, essentially, every other website called it a, let me quote:

“I’m… I don’t know… um… WHAT THE FUCK? Intelligent response in maybe 15 minutes when I’ve recovered.” – as seen in one SlashDot (a super mega huge site where I get my news from)

..and others: “I thought that Seinfeld was acting like he just smoked a whole bag full of weed and Gates was just annoyed with him.” – and that’s just one of the bazillion of comments which were posted.

Hell, even my favourite Venture Capitalist/Startup review site, TechCrunch said that it sucked.. in a way: “These ads can’t be all tech or they’ll lose the audience. But I can’t imagine this will sell software, either.”

Wah, Microsoft can’t be *that* dumb, right?

Okay, let’s cut to the chase and well, I’ll be nice and post a clip of the ad below:

Go on, stop reading for a while and… watch it! I’m serious, just watch the damned thing, and tell me if it’s *THAT* bad, or if you even caught anything from it.

Here, now these are my thoughts:

The very first time I watched this clip via some blog, my reaction was.. “Uh, WTF is this? Microsoft spent $300 million dollars on this shit? Sheesh, they must be crazy!” – so, I re-played the video, and watched it again.. trying to spot missing details.

When that didn’t work, (because apparently, it *really is* crappy enough) – I tried scrolling down to look at the comments, and saw like close to 200 comments at once, commenting on how BAD this clip was, and how Microsoft was throwing money for no apparent reason into the drain.

I checked SlashDot, and saw 400+ comments on a single page – wow! And other tech blogs had in the excess of hundreds of comments, and MILLIONS of views! ALL OF THEM WERE CRITIZING MICROSOFT’S AD!

Now, let me make a wager that the newspaper will specially even come up with a column to say how much the ad sucks, and that Bill Gates screwed up big time. Anyone wanna bet?

In fact, a Microsoft guy even sent out an email to internal Microsoft staff to boost their morale! It *honestly* can’t be that bad, can it?

The sad thing is that, unfortunately, it is that bad.

That said, I will flip the story apart, and tell you that if you think Bill Gates/Microsoft was stupid, you are WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG, and that you have limited foresight, like what the rest of the news agencies, blogs, and review sites have.

Yes, but Microsoft spent $300 million dollars on that crap? True, Microsoft spent $300 million for the whole campaign, but that was just the TIP of the iceberg! It was, as Microsoft said, a “teaser” to get “conversation going” – but.. er, how?

LIKE THIS! PRECISELY LIKE THIS! Microsoft is employing reverse psychology on everyone – critics, reviewers, bloggers, and us, the general public. They *want* you to think it’s SO bad, such that you will tell EVERYONE that Microsoft’s stupid, and that their ad sucks, and so that… people will *try* to figure out what it says, but fail miserably – and post their interpretations up!

This creates Residual Branding, my dear friends – and no, I didn’t take the module on Marketing in school. Honestly, it’s amazing how fast I picked such stuff up (and my eyes widened) while working together with seasoned professionals in the marketing industry

How so? Allow me to explain:

a) Should Microsoft run a “usual” campaign like what Apple did with their Mac vs PC ads, it would be silly – because everyone expects a huge company with alot of money, to attempt to “whack” back Apple’s ads (you do know that it *really* is Microsoft vs Apple now, don’t you?) – this strifles the campaign life/viral effect of the videos – because it’s no big deal if Microsoft makes a perfect ad!

Oh yes, might as well let you guys watch one of Apple’s Mac vs PC ad – yes, got hot girl inside – GO WATCH!

b) The age old adege – “Bad news spread like wildfire“: Guess what! EVERYONE fell for it, those who even thought to themselves that it sucked, and had that thought suckered into their head, all fell for it. Microsoft wants you to *remember* that it sucked, so that you’ll tell your friends, and then THEY will check the videos out and stuff – How else do you explain the millions of comments and countless people trying to decipher the video? Remember kids, this is a super powderful method – Let’s take a local example: Remember Tammy from NYP?

Scandals, bad news, and all the bad stuff, spread like wildfire – nobody can stop it, not even the Government, or any newspaper or whatsoever! – come on, porn is illegal in Singapore but I’m sure you probably knew (many) friends who Bluetooth’ed the clips over, or talked about it, and stuff.

Now, think of it like this:

Windows (and Microsoft products) are targeted at decision makers (FYI: Microsoft earns more money thru corporate sales [selling to companies] than they earn from us, home users) – those who decide what their offices should use, and what they should get, and how much MONEY there is to throw in.

How certain would any business decision maker be if they read about Microsoft’s apparent “screwup” in the papers? Would they discuss with their associates on this? OF COURSE THEY WOULD – and in turn, remind them that they *should* be using Windows!

c) Don’t take my word for this, see REAL statistics – I doubt anyone made a comparison yet, so I’ll do it:

Oh look, 2,930,000 pages talked about the advertisement! That’s like.. wow, alot!

Let’s pull out the calculator and do some basic math:

Assume that this ad costed $5 million to produce, because it’s one super expensive advertisement with Bill Gates in it, and this is just part one of many, and assume that each of the 2.93 million pages each has say, 10,000 pageviews a day (this is a fair number, considering that the big blogs have millions of views per day and smaller ones less than 100).

(2 930 000 * 10 000) / 5 000 000 = 5 860

Hence, each dollar (spent by Microsoft) would buy you 5860 views, and not only that, these views are GURANTEED to leave residual thoughts in people’s heads, start conversations, and make people TALK and get hyped over the whole company!

Damn, that’s cheap lah! Considering that “buying” your own spot in the local and international papers will come naturally.. too…

Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the new age of Social Media and viral video marketing! Microsoft *wanted* people to copy this video, they wanted people to upload it, and they wanted people to be dumbfounded and blurry, and most imporantly, they wanted people to COMMENT on the video.

It’s all about the hype, darlings – and we’ve all fallen dumbly into it!