Branding, Culture, Politics, and Everything in Between

If any ad has been dissected and talked about more the past year than this ad, I’d like to know what it is. Much has been written about Crispin landing the unenviable yet so intriguing task of rebranding Microsoft, and after the Microsoft Mojave campaign, what you see above is finally the first TV-spot.

The casting of Jerry Seinfeld seems very un-Crispin when you first think about it. Hiring a superstar, and a fading one at that (like Antti said in this Jaiku thread “Jerry belongs to the 90s”) seems like a go-to move from the mind-share branding playbook. But while Seinfed (both persona and TV-show character) is not as current or “hip”, he still packs a lot of cultural meaning. Also, how they’ve scripted the ad and treated Jerry as a character is what makes the choice intriguing.

Grant McCracken had a fairly comprehensive rundown of the ad and its meaning. Small excerpt:

The meaning mechanics of the ad are wonderful: Jerry’s shoes squeak like a cartoon character. A store called Shoe Circus. A family gathered outside the store window in solemn and learned reverence for shoes within. The meaningful glance between Jerry and Bill that makes no sense. Seinfeld’s lunatic advice that Bill try wearing his clothes in the shower. The starring role give churros. The idea that anyone would want to earn points in a store like this, especially when the card calls them a “shoe circus clown club member.” The idea that computers could ever be “moist,” “chewy,” and edible. The idea that Jerry suspected this “all along.”

As far as contemporary advertising goes, this ad is indeed rich with nuances and meanings (I’m especially intrigued by the meaningful glance and the knowing smile Jerry and Bill share) that speak to you more than a traditional ad would. I wrote in my master’s thesis that as people’s media-savviness grows, it opens new opportunities for storytelling because people understand the medium better and you don’t need to be so explicit in your selling. However, this media-savviness (combined with market saturation and clutter) also makes people more resentful of ads that they feel are too pushy, “selling” and simply insulting of their intelligence as consumers. And given that the brand in question is Microsoft, the pushiest and most profiteering brand in its industry, I can definitely see why Crispin went for a more “un-selling” approach.

I wrote in the comments of Grant’s post that I think they will be going back to the “run tight” phrase they threw around a few times in the ad. First when Jerry said it, and when the hispanics outside the shop said it. This might be just a clever and indirect way of introducing the new benefit or value proposition. It’ll be interesting to see if/how they revisit the phrase in future spots. I think these ad spots are not meant to be examined individually, they work as one long commercial, sort of how the Cloverfield ad campaign was all part of the experience, almost like a treasure hunt. I guess some parallels to “Lost” work here, too. Like somebody posted in the comments on Grant’s blog, it’s too early to tell if this is a good campaign or not.

But I’m definitely a fan, if not for the sheer volume of discussion the ad has generated.

UPDATE: Here is the second spot, the longer version.