Microsoft is an enormous company. In some ways it’s like a battleship, in the sense that when they decide to make a course correction it takes a while for the rudders to move, then it takes even longer for the ship to start turning.

When I was at the New Media Expo last week, I noticed the presence of the Zune music player - they have decided that they should promote the Zune as a device you can listen to podcasts on. “Podcasts!” How did internet-specific audio content ever get a name like that? Oh yeah, about five years ago the iPod staked out that territory.

Thus it’s characteristic that Microsoft announced today that they’re going to pay Jerry Seinfeld $10 million to star in a series of commercials promoting the unpopular Vista operating system. A series of humorous commercials, promoting a computing platform… they probably came up with the idea the same day that the first Justin Long/John Hodgman spot for Apple played, and they’re just getting around to signing the contracts now.

The Wall Street Journal says Seinfeld will appear with Bill Gates in the ads. They’ve also got plans for ads with Chris Rock and Wil Ferrell. Seinfeld is a known Mac enthusiast; Ferrell appeared in one of the Mac “switch” ads a few years ago. I have no idea what OS Rock uses, though I like to think he’s a Linux guy.

COMPLETELY UNRELATED: Two years ago I was having dinner with some friends at a Denny’s on Sunset in Hollywood, and Justin Long was eating at the very next table! This was before LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD, but man, I hope someone talked to that kid about image eating.

-daniel k

This entry was posted on Friday, August 22nd, 2008 at 5:44 am and is filed under Digital Wonderland, Marketing, Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.