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Microsoft’s Shoe Circus
Microsoft’s Shoe Circus
By Bernhard Warner and Matthew Yeomans
Posted Friday, November 7, 2008 - 11:33am
| Name: | Microsoft's “Shoe Circus" ad featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates |
| Stats: | 669,710 views in its first week (Sept. 4-11, 2008), 9 video responses, 1,050 text comments |
| What you see: | It's an ad, of course, about nothing. Jerry Seinfeld, walking through a mall, spots America's richest man trying on a pair of loafers at Shoe Circus, a discount shoe store. Nah, can't be. An incredulous Seinfeld marches into the store to offer the billionaire wacky advice—wearing the shoes in the shower to break them in, for example—before Gates settles on a pair. There was a lot riding on this ad campaign. Microsoft has sunk $300 million into the ads to revive its sinking brand image and boost sales of Vista. |
| Takeout/Takeaway: | YouTube viewers rate it a 3 of 5 stars, and Gates upstages Seinfeld. As one commenter says, "I hate microsoft, but i love Bill Gates for being so cool." |
| Social Media Effect: | What started as a ballyhooed attempt to regain relevancy has turned in to one of the most bewildering and mocked ad campaigns of recent years. |
YouTube BrandWatch is The Big Money's exploration into how the world's best-known businesses, so adept at managing their images offline, are being perceived online, where control is harder to come by. Every week, The Big Money features a corporate-themed video that's had significant viewership on YouTube: some approved, some unapproved, some mashed-up combinations of the two. And we'll ask our readers to vote on how the video affects the brands. We think the responses will surprise you, and provide a window onto what is fast becoming the most important playground for corporate games. (Note: This feature has no official relationship to YouTube or its owner, Google.)
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