Filed under: Microsoft
Life Comes Together: The Windows ad campaign that wasn't
Life Comes Together/Alex from John McNeil on Vimeo.
But what about the ads that didn't make the cut? Blogger Long Zheng spotted a series of Microsoft/Windows ads in the Vimeo account of John McNeil, former creative director of McCann Worldgroup. The ad agency didn't get the Windows campaign, but judging from this series of 9 commercials, it's not for the lack of trying.
Like the commercial Microsoft eventually went with, these "Life Comes Together" themed ads don't really focus on the features of Windows software very much. But most do hint at one or two features that Windows or other Microsoft products have that help them fit into your daily life. You can check out of the rest of the videos at istartedsomething.
What do you think of the ads? Did Microsoft make the right call in passing up on these and going with its current campaign? Or would you rather have seen these ads on the air?
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jordan said 9:35PM on 8-03-2009
Well they made the right choice by not choosing the one that is embedded in this article. I mean the girl was alright, but the dude on the bed was a douche.
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Jitaroo said 9:35PM on 8-03-2009
Yeah it didn't make much sense, I mean if he was to busy playing his game why would he suddenly listen to her in the end and answer? He left windows for a girl, which isn't what they want you to do. Also it sends a message that we'll keep you so preoccupied that you won't care for real life anymore.
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Brendan said 9:35PM on 8-03-2009
Basically, those ads suck.
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stringAnomaly said 9:35PM on 8-03-2009
Some of the ads were good, but clearly not the tone microsoft needed to combat apple's ads.
On a different note you chose to embed the worse ad of the whole bunch which is very disappointing and is a bad indicator of the rest.
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sitruc said 9:35PM on 8-03-2009
After watching all of them, I'm not sure they did chose the worst one. A couple of those were okay and played the emotions the right way, but most weren't that good and it is easy to see why MS didn't go with them.
DeoWulf said 11:29PM on 8-03-2009
Darn, I would have liked to hear some Sufjan Stevens in my Microsoft ads. But none of those ads really accomplished anything as far as promoting the actual OS. And the one about sharing old photos was extremely lame and didn't even include a computer reference.
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Unregistered said 8:37AM on 8-04-2009
I was waiting for the girl to lose it and whack the guy on the head with his laptop, gosh he is such an s.
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Rocketboy said 8:37AM on 8-04-2009
Wow, they were awful.
The type of commercial where at the end, where if it wasn't for the windows logo, you'd have NO idea what the advertisement was for.
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blogward said 4:20PM on 8-04-2009
From the hippy-dippy acoustic guitar to the WASP highschoolers who looked like they might be the children of Microsoft middle managers, that was the cheesiest of the cheesy. What was it saying? That Windows gets you chicks? My eyes, my ears!!
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