Cortana, Microsoft's new digital assistant, was named after a highly sexualized "assistant" character in Halo video games. While the actual application icon is just a blue circle, the internet has already exploded with the idea of having the sexy subordinate of their gamer fantasies speak to them on their phones (through the iconic voice of Jen Taylor).
Way to make tech more woman-friendly, Microsoft. Bravo.
As Adrants' Steve Hall writes, "You've gotta love these corporate videos that 'leak' their way into the pubic." (I think he meant "public", but Steve writes for Playboy too, so he probably hasn't flagged that typo in his spellchecker.)
This is hardly a new tactic, though. Remember this?
From the Associated Press last month:
Microsoft developed its anti-Google ad campaign shortly after hiring former political operative Mark Penn in August as a corporate strategist who reports directly to Ballmer. Penn is best known as a former pollster for President Bill Clinton and a campaign strategist for Hillary Clinton's unsuccessful bid for president in 2008. Penn left his job as CEO of public relations firm Burson-Marsteller to help Microsoft generate more usage of its Bing search engine and other online services.
That's a big challenge, right there. (I never touch Bing myself.) But the points about Google's omniscience are valid, even if coming from a company like Microsoft.
I guess it just comes down to what you're willing to put up with to get free stuff. I'm writing this on the free Google blog platform, will be sharing it on G+, and hope that some of you will find me... through Google.
But then again, I'm an adman. We all like to think we're immune to advertising, no matter how targeted.
More evidence of the sea-change in marriage rights for same-sex couples that has taken over the United States. Although I can't help but note that it's probably a lot easier for the "mainstream" to watch two beautiful women kiss each other than two men. But anyway, baby steps.
The responsively-designed campaign site is full of weird self-deprecating content about people's perceptions of previous IE releases, while pushing the line that new IE is completely different.
It also stuffs in as many pop culture references as possible around the message of "comebacks".
I have to say, I admire the campaign's bold and unconventional approach. I'm a ad guy, though, not a tech one. So I'll let The Verge have the final word:
The approach is fresh, but Microsoft faces some significant challenges against an increasingly popular Chrome browser and offerings from Mozilla and Apple, all of which offer varied and additional features. Internet Explorer is hovering at around 50 percent market share worldwide, so it's certainly time that Microsoft attempted to reverse the bleed it has experienced over the past several years. But, will it work?
This comic by The Joy of Tech is painful to read because it's so damned true. As technology moguls and social media platform nabobs keep stealing each other's best ideas in a rush of "me too", we're left with a choice between vanilla and vanilla.
Convergence isn't always a good thing. I especially hate it when people post the same update on Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook. Every time I see a hashtag on my Facebook wall, I feel broadcast at. And Amazon, a place where I occasionally buy CDs and books, keeps trying to be Wall-Mart. (Or even worse, to be my friend.)
I like my brands specialized, focussed on doing one or two things better than everyone else. When they all have similar offerings, I don't know who I'm supposed to connect with where. The whole thing loses intimacy in the noise of too many channels and offerings. But perhaps I'm part of a dying breed.
I mean, what the hell? His performance is lacklustre, the dude himself has a real face for voiceover, and the ad lacks any sort of interesting concept, execution, or even apparent effort.
Let's review:
Double Rainbow was a great organic viral.
The autotune version was hilarious.
The parodies are even good.
So how does Microsoft screw this one up? What does it mean?
To prove how vulnerable your personal information is, Internet Explorer 8 recreated notorious internet scams--live, off the web-- in the most street-smart city in world: New York. Watch what happened.
New Yorkers scammed by a bricks-and-mortar version of a common Internet fraud? As Mashable notes, the social experiment exposes "just how gullible we can be when the promise of money is dangled in our face."
Whether a new version of Internet Explorer can actually protect humans from their own gullibility remains to be seen. Same goes for whether a clever ad can trick users into trusting IE8.
